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HOME AUTHORS 

PENNSYLVANIA 



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STRAUGHN 



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Class "\>S 34 & 

Book 7<yS7 

Copyright N?_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



HOME AUTHORS- 
PENNSYLVANIA 

By 
WILLIAM R. STRAUGHN, PH. D. 




UNION BOOK COMPANY 

CHAUTAUQUA, N. Y. 



T^7 



Copyright, 1913^ 

by 

Union Book Company 



©CI.A351019 



CONTENTS 

Page 
The Approach to Literature i 

Bayard Taylor 12 

Christmas and New Year in Germany. 

My Friendship with Wild Animals in the Nile 

Country. 
The Bedouin Love Song. 

Thomas Buchanan Read 27 

Sheridan's Ride. 

Charles Godfrey Leland 32 

The Carnival at Rome. 

Stephen Collins Foster 43 

Massa's in de Cold Ground. 
Old Folks at Home. 

Frank R. Stockton 50 

The Transferred Ghost. 

S. Wier Mitchell 70 

A Venture • in 1777. 

Lloyd Mifflin 88 

Peace to the Brave. 

Elizabeth Lloyd 93 

Frank's Passion. 

Song of the Twentieth Century. 

Thomas Allibone Janvier no 

The Vengeance of the Gods. 



HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

Henry van Dyke 123 

Birds in the Morning. 
The Whip-Poor-Will. 

Owen Wister 131 

Spit-Cat Creek. 

John L. Shroy 148 

Give Us a Place to Play. 
I've Gotto Go to School. 
Be a Good Boy; Good-bye. 
The Teacher Has a Pick on Me. 

Richard Harding Davis 155 

The Heart of the Great Divide. 
Elsie Singmaster 174 

The Belsnickel. 

Appendix 191 

The Study of Poetry. 
Notes. 



PREFACE. 

The aim of this book is simple and direct: 
i. To arouse an interest in home authors. 

2. To stimulate a study of national literature. 

3. To provide sufficient material from the 
writings of each author to induce pupils and teachers 
to continue the study. 

4. To show to young people that contempor- 
aneous writers are worthy of study. I have always 
found that with youth the living personalities are more 
appealing than the dead, and that things or persons 
near are preferred to things or persons remote. 

This literature is intended primarily for use in 
Grade Eight, but in some schools where pupils have 
received adequate preparation, it may be used in 
Grade Seven. In other school systems it may be 
found to fit best in the first year of the high school. 
Particularly will this be true in township high schools. 

I am much indebted to many friends for kindly 
help and criticism in the preparation of this material. 

William R. Straughn. 
DuBois, Pa., June 5, 1913. 



THE APPROACH TO LITERATURE 
I. 

The study of the life, works, and problems of men 
and women who were born near us, or who live near 
us, arouses a deeper interest than exists from the 
first in conditions and actions of persons remote. This 
thought has been utilized in the teaching of history, 
geography, and concrete arithmetic. It can even more 
appreciatively be used in the study of literature; for 
literature is the expression of life in language har- 
monious with the emotions aroused. If the form of 
life pictured is directed to mature intellects, a more 
varied language can be employed than is possible for 
developing minds. 

The great object in the study of literature is to 
stimulate interest, through which the student ap- 
proaches the magic kingdom of pleasurable and profit- 
able books. There are books and books, which is about 
as accurate a classification as one can give. We ap- 
proach the expositive and argumentative writings, such 
as deal with the problems of life, through the com- 
positions which possess an inherent interest for young 
people. For children there are fables, myths and 
shorter poems ; for boys and girls there are legends. 



2 * HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

travels, biographies, adventures, mysteries, and ro- 
mances ; for older persons who have read through 
these kinds of writing, there are these same books, 
which always have an interest, and other books too 
numerous to classify. 

To books intended especially for boys and girls 
we give the general name, juvenile. The growing 
child demands juvenile writings, for they are on a 
level with his intellect. The interest in these is already 
there — the interest of a living young person who is 
following attentively the lives of other young persons 
found in the story. This is the period of human 
development when warm blood mingles with warm 
blood, when the world is imaginatively real, when ad- 
venture is supreme, and when romance is developing. 
These books are absorbingly interesting because they 
come close to the life of the reader. Rarely will the 
child be able to tell who wrote the book, and years 
after perhaps he has completely forgotten. One step 
further in the development of this real interest and 
we shall aid in removing the serious defect of for- 
getting the author: in the formative period of intel- 
lectual development, when the pupil is just approaching 
the study of literature as a distinct part of the 
curriculum, we should give him the opportunity to 
learn of the writings of men and women of the state 
in which he lives. Perhaps the homes of some of 
these authors are within a few miles of his own home, 
within the same county or neighboring county, or at 
least near the home of a boy or girl friend whom he 
has visited. Far better, perhaps he has personally met 



THE APPROACH TO LITERATURE 3 

or seen the writer. This association of the home with 
the name of the author and the literary characters 
Avhich he has created will develop a real and abiding 
interest in men and women of letters. It will lead to 
an appreciative study of their w r orks, and through 
these into the wider field of national and international 
literature, always retaining an interest in the person- 
ality of the authors. 

Xot all the books of all the writers in the state 
shall be read. The awakening of a real interest is 
of first importance. This may better be done through 
one book than through many. Detailed analyses should 
be avoided, particularly in prose writings, and only 
such details should be employed in poetry as will re- 
sult in a complete, yet appreciative, understanding of 
the poem as a whole. More damaging instruction is 
allowed in the study of poetry than in any other 
subject. Lord Tennyson, the great English poet, and 
Mr. Lloyd Mifflin, one of the Pennsylvania poets, have 
complained of the custom nowadays among readers 
to find in every poem a part of the biography of the 
poet. They ask the reader to attribute to the poet at 
least a small share of imagination. Teachers and stu- 
dents can profit by this complaint. Seek not detailed 
knowledge in poetry, but seek enjoyment through 
understanding.* 

It is well for the teacher to read aloud to the 
class, selections that will arouse a desire to know more 
about the author and his writings. The biographies 

*See appendix for a suggested self-help study of poetry. 



4 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

and selections given in this book are for that purpose — 

to stimulate teachers and pupils, particularly pupils. 

This work is not, and does not pretend to be, 
all-inclusive, but such authors are placed before the 
young people of Pennsylvania as seem suited to the 
purpose of meeting the ideas advanced in this intro- 
duction. In the selection of authors, a division has 
been necessary, and the biographical line of division 
has been made to include only those writers bom in 
Pennsylvania, while those born elsewhere but now 
residing in the state are given in a brief survey of 
the literature of the state. 

A guiding principle in the use of this book as an 
approach to literature may safely be found in the 
words of Dr. Henry van Dyke, a native of Pennsyl- 
vania, who is a writer and teacher of experience and 
distinction. "When I read to a child I never analyze , 
or dissect the thing read. I treat it as if it were alive. 
The child asks all the questions necessary ; but when a 
child reads to me, I ask the questions." 

II. 

From the earliest days of literary struggles in 
this country, Pennsylvania has had a leading part in 
the development of writers. Passing over ambitious 
individuals of the colonial times, who produced ar- 
gumentative essays rather than poetry or romantic 
fiction, we come to the name of Benjamin Franklin, 
an adopted son of the Quaker colony, who gave one 
of the first enduring contributions to American liter- 
ature. No young person should fail to read his Auto- 



THE APPROACH TO LITERATURE 5 

biography, because both of the pleasure and of the 
profit which it affords. The details of his life are 
quite well known to all school boys and girls. 

During the days when taxes rested heavily upon 
the good people of the colonies, there was born in 
Philadelphia a child, who, although struggling against 
melancholy, was at the early age of twenty-seven to be- 
come the author of the first successful American ro- 
mance — Wieland. Charles Brockden Brown has long 
since been forgotten, for neither the language nor the 
depressive surroundings of his novels appeal to 
modern readers ; but he it was who disclosed to James 
Fenimore Cooper the possibilities of American scenes 
and characters. Under Franklin and Brown literary 
supremacy in the New World was transferred from 
Massachusetts to Pennsylvania. 

Shortly afterwards New York City pushed to the 
front with the distinguished Knickerbocker Writers, 
but about the middle of the nineteenth century Gra- 
ham's Magazine, a leading periodical published in 
Philadelphia, again restored literary influence to the 
Keystone state, when great contemporary authors like 
Poe, Lowell, Longfellow, Leland, and Hawthorne were 
attracted to contribute to its columns. Graham's 
soon had 35,000 subscriptions, the first maga- 
zine to boast of such an enormous circulation. Penn- 
sylvania has continued, even until to-day, to be the 
home of solid periodicals, magazines, and daily news- 
papers. The Saturday Evening Post, a journal of 
literary excellence founded by Benjamin Franklin, is 
perhaps the most widely read magazine in the world. 



6 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

This and other publications give Pennsylvania an 
abiding place in the formative thought of American 
literature. 

Longer life-sketches are given in this book of 
many of the ambitious literary sons and daughters of 
Pennsylvania, but others, not thus included, deserve 
more than a mere passing notice or enumeration. 

Jeremiah Black (1810-1883), whose home was in 
Somerset County, was a prominent jurist, statesman, 
and writer, although he led such a busy life that he 
was unable to devote special efforts to writing. His 
Essays and Speeches were widely read a few years 
ago. He was Secretary of State under President 
Buchanan, and was the counsel for President Johnson 
in the famous impeachment proceedings. 

Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888), well known as 
being the author of Little Women and its sequel Little 
Men, which are delightful juvenile tales, was born in 
Germantown, although most of her life was spent in 
Xew England. She was the daughter of Amos Bron- 
son Alcott, a visionary school-master, poet, and mem- 
ber of a distinguished group of writers. As her father 
failed to provide for his family the necessities of life, 
to her fell the task of meeting the needs of the house- 
hold. She tried teaching, but that was not sufficiently 
remunerative. She took in sewing, and even hired 
herself out as a servant. All the while she was writing 
stories for newspapers. After years of struggles, she 
met with success on the publication of Little Women. 

Eliphalet Oram Lyte (1842-1913), was for many 
years Principal of the Millersville State Normal 



THE APPROACH TO LITERATURE 7 

School. He was the author of several beautiful hymns, 
including Just Beyond and I'm a Pilgrim, As a writer, 
he will be longest remembered for the composition of 
Pennsylvania, a state patriotic song that shows con- 
siderable merit and depth of feeling. He was born at 
Bird-in-Hand, a village of Lancaster County. 

Maurice Francis Egan (1852-), is at present, 
1913, the United States Minister to Denmark. He was 
born in Philadelphia, and educated in LaSalle College, 
Georgetown University, and Villanova College. For 
nearly twenty years he was Professor of English 
Literature in leading Roman Catholic universities. Six 
years ago he entered the diplomatic service, and has 
risen high in the esteem of his countrymen. He has 
been decorated by the King of Belgium for researches 
in literature. He is known to young people as the 
author of A Garden of Roses, Jack Chumleigh, and 
In a Brazilian Forest, 

Agnes Repplier (1857-), is one of the most prom- 
inent of Pennsylvania essayists. She, too, was born in 
Philadelphia, of French ancestry. Of late years she 
has spent much time in Europe. She was educated in 
Sacred Heart Convent at Torresdale. Philadelphia — 
The Place and the People is one of her most appre- 
ciative books, which displays a keen interest and knowl- 
edge of affairs in the leading city of the Common- 
wealth. Another good book is Essays in Idleness. 
Her works are not intended for children but for mature 
intellects. 

Ida M. Tarbell (1857-), one of the editors of The 
American Magazine, was born in Erie County, and 



8 HOME AUTHORS— PEXXSYLVAXIA 

educated at Allegheny College, Meadville. She was 
also a student at universities in France. For many 
years she has been connected with the best of American 
magazines, and has proved herself worthy of a high 
place in literature. She is a vigorous writer. Her 
works, however, are directed to matured intellects. A 
Life of Abraham Lincoln is one of her best produc- 
tions. 

Margaretta Wade Deland (1857-), spent most of 
her youth in her uncle's home in Manchester, now a 
district of Pittsburgh. This village was the original 
of the Old Chester found in her delightful stories. 
Her present home is in Boston. She is best known 
as the author of Old Chester Tales and the sequel, 
Dr. Lavendars People. 

Kate Douglas Wiggin, Mrs. Riggs, (1859-), was 
born in Philadelphia. All young people will enjoy 
her stories : Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, The Diary 
of a Goose Girl, Mother Carey's Chickens. 

Mary Moss (1864-), is another Philadelphian by 
birth and residence who has achieved success as a 
writer. She has contributed short stories and essays 
to the leading magazines. She is the author *of A 
Sequence in Hearts. 

John Russell Hayes (1866-), of Swarthmore, has 
given us some pretty poems of the Brandywine dis- 
tricts. As teacher and librarian, he has spent a quiet, 
unassuming life among books. Among his works are 
The Old Fashioned Garden and Other Verses and In 
a Brandywine Harvest-field. 

Helen Reimensnyder Martin (1868-), is known as 



THE APPROACH TO LITERATURE 9 

the author of many short stories and works dealing 
with Pennsylvania-German life. She was born in 
Lancaster, and was reared amid German surroundings. 
However, she has never truthfully portrayed the life 
of the so-called "Pennsylvania-Dutch." Her char- 
acters are not types, but exceptions. People who have 
never come into personal contact with the German 
element in Pennsylvania will form an exaggerated 
opinion from Tillie, A Mennonite Maid and Sabina, 
A Story of the Amish. 

Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-), was born in 
Pittsburgh, and was educated in the public schools 
of the city. From an unknown writer, she broke into 
the field of authorship with a brilliant piece of mysteri- 
ous and entertaining fiction. The Circular Staircase. 
This was followed the next year with The Man in 
Lower Ten. Mrs. Rinehart lives in a beautiful country 
home at Sewickley, but does most of her writing in a 
plain office in Pittsburgh. She is a popular writer, and 
contributes to the best magazines. 

Mary Brecht Pulver is a promising young writer 
of Lancaster, which is also the home of Dr. Benjamin 
F. Lrban, a poet of more than average ability, who 
has recently published a volume entitled Dreaming on 
the Conestoga. 

Florence Earle Coates, of Philadelphia, has pro- 
duced some excellent verses in recent years. Mine and 
Thine and Lyrics of Life are two of her volumes of 
poems. 

All of these writers are natives of Pennsylvania. 
It will be noted by the observant that most of the 
authors come from Philadelphia or vicinity. This is a 
natural condition. The eastern part of the state con- 



io HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

tains the oldest settlements where we find greater 
stability and leisure, both of which are essential to a 
permanent growth toward literature. Then, too, this is 
the region of larger cities, with splendid libraries, and a 
region in close proximity to the great publishing houses 
of Philadelphia and New York. In the central counties 
of the state, farming and mining are the chief occupa- 
tions, neither of which lends itself readily to literary 
inducements. Pittsburgh is a great industrial center 
and her people have not yet attained that leisurely 
reflection which finds its outburst in arts and in liter- 
ature. From out of this region there will yet come 
one, or more, to picture in verse and in fiction the life 
of the many races who there have a home. 

Many of the distinguished native sons and daugh- 
ters, whose names have been included within this 
volume, have moved to other states ; many from other 
parts have come here to abide as at home, and it is but 
proper that some of these, who, like Benjamin Frank- 
lin, have been adopted into the state family, should be 
known as bringing additional honors to a great com- 
monwealth, rich in natural and cultivated resources, of 
which literature is not the least. 

Mayne Reid (1818-1883), the well-known writer 
of thrilling adventures for boys, was born in Ireland. 
When twenty years old, he came to this country and 
made his home in Philadelphia. He traveled extensively 
throughout the United States. On the outbreak of the 
Mexican War he was made captain of a company of 
United States troops, and served with distinction in 
that struggle. He has written about fifty stories of 



THE APPROACH TO LITERATURE n 

adventures, all of which exalt manly courage. The 
Rifle Rangers and Osceola are two of his books. 

One of America's leading historians is John Bach 
McMaster'(i852-), who for thirty years has been 
Professor of History at the University of Pennsyl- 
vania. He was born in Brooklyn, but most of his life 
has been passed in this state. A History of the People 
of the United States is a notable contribution to liter- 
ature and learning. More than thirty years were 
devoted to its composition. It is in eight volumes. 

Conshohocken is the home of one adopted into 
state literature. Charles Heber Clark, (1841-), who 
writes under the pen-name of "Max Adder," was born 
in Berlin, .Aid. The Quakeress is his best known work. 

George Horace Lorimer (1868-), the distinguished 
editor of The Saturday Evening Post, is not a Penn- 
sylvanian by birth, but he has added to the charm of 
literature pouring forth from the Keystone state. He 
has written several books, but his first production re- 
mains the best known— Letters from a Self -Made Mer- 
chant to his Son. 



BAYARD TAYLOR 

Traveler, Journalist, Poet, Novelist 

Bayard Taylor was born nearly one hundred 
years ago at Kennett Square, a small village of Chester 
County. Those who know the beautiful Kennett of 
today will rarely associate with it the cross-roads and 
cultivated farms of the boyhood of Bayard when his 
father kept the country store, from which he soon 
withdrew for the more profitable occupation of farm- 
ing. The old homestead was burned long ago, but on 
one section of the Taylor farm, Bayard, grown to man- 
hood and famous as a poet and a traveler, built a 
beautiful home which he called "Cedarcroft." All 
through the doubtful struggles of his youth, even 
when tramping in distant countries and almost starving, 
he promised himself that some day he would go back 
to live with the birds, the trees, the swamp, and the 
hillocks of Kennett. He did, and more, for in many 
charming verses he tells of these, his Nature friends, 
and in a novel pleasing to boys and girls he has left 
a romance of his native village, The Story of Kennett. 

The story of his life is the struggle to fulfill an 
abiding ambition : first, to travel in foreign lands ; and 
secondly, to be remembered as a great American poet. 
How he always kept these hopes to the front has to be 

12 



BAYARD TAYLOR 13 

told in a few words. His parents were sturdy Quaker 
folk. He and his brothers and sisters were sent to 
the village school. It is interesting to know that one 
brother, Col. Frederick Taylor, who was killed in the 
battle of Gettysburg, was the brave leader of the cele- 
brated Pennsylvania Regiment of Bucktails. Bayard 
was a thin, wiry, nervous, mischievous bey with a 
great fondness for reading and geography. His read- 
ing embraced a wide range of literature ; in fact, 
everything that he could find in Kennett Square and in 
the library at West Chester, where he attended acad- 
emy. It was an insignificant guide-book, entitled 
The Tourist in Europe, which by chance fell into 
his hands, that stimulated his desire to travel. 

When seventeen he was apprenticed to the editor 
of the West Chester Village Record, and entered 
upon the trade of a printer. For more than a year 
he had been writing poems which had appeared in 
this weekly newspaper. The apprenticeship became 
distasteful to him, and, as he was still ardently cherish- 
ing the thought of European rambles, he wrote a 
volume of poems, personally canvassed his friends, and 
secured from them subscriptions for his prospective 
book. From the sale of this book he netted twenty 
dollars. Three distinguished editors in Philadelphia 
contributed an additional one hundred and twenty 
dollars in return for promised letters of travel. He 
now had a sum of money which he considered to be 
sufficiently large to undertake the proposed journey, 
but he must secure a passport from the United States 
government. He could not afford the expenses of 
stage travel to Washington, so he and his cousjn 



14 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

Frank went on foot the greater part of the one 
hundred and twenty miles — excellent training for two 
boys who expected to cross Europe on foot. 

Bayard was now nineteen years old. Two years 
he passed in Europe, tramping 3,000 miles, wherever 
his inclination led him. He was feeding his mind, but 
often starving his body. At times he was so poor that 
he lived on tenpence a day. Sometimes he was without 
food for two days. Scanty remittances from Horace 
Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, which was 
publishing the letters from the young American, in- 
duced the adventurous traveler to push on. When he 
reached London on his way back toward home, he had 
less than fifty cents in his pockets. Thus did Bayard 
Taylor see the peoples, the institutions, and the 
countries of the Old World. 

He had left the shores of America an unknown 
boy; he returned a distinguished traveler and writer. 
A nation had been reading with interest his letters of 
travel, composed with charming simplicity and appre- 
ciation. These letters were published in book form 
under the title Views Afoot. The ease of the 
introduction carries the reader into an interesting 
volume : "An enthusiastic desire of visiting the Old 
World haunted me from early childhood. I cherished 
a presentiment, amounting almost to belief, that I 
should one day behold the scenes among which my 
fancy had so long wandered.'' Those who are desir- 
ous of knowing more about distant peoples, where and 
how they live, will be anxious to read this volume 
and others written by the Pennsylvanian who is known 
as "the great American traveler." 






BAYARD TAYLOR 15 

Taylor saw much of the world, particularly those 
parts not frequented by tourists. He was in California 
during the exciting days following the discovery of 
gold, and told of his experiences through the columns 
of The Tribune. He saw the Pyramids of Egypt, 
ascended the Nile, crossed the deserts of Africa, 
roamed through the Holy Land, enjoyed a bath in 
the Dead Sea, climbed a range of the Himalaya 
Mountains, sailed the oceans, witnessed a rebellion in 
China, beheld the glories of the Midnight Sun, looked 
upon the geysers of Iceland, ate with beggars, and was 
the guest of the greatest men and women of all 
countries. Thus was the viewpoint of his life broad- 
ened, and he was fitted for positions of great re- 
sponsibility among the affairs of men. 

President Hayes appointed him Minister to the 
German Empire. The renowned Prince Bismarck 
greeted him with honors. But in less than a year he 
died in Berlin, having scarcely entered upon his duties 
as a diplomat. 

As a poet Bayard Taylor has enriched American 
literature. His best contributions are found in a 
volume entitled Poems of the Orient, of which 
The Bedouin Love Song is most widely remembered. 
Like some of the poetry of Tennyson and other lyric 
writers, this poem has been set to music. He made an 
excellent English translation of Faust, the master- 
piece of Goethe, the great German poet. As a novelist, 
he has given Hannah Thurston, John Godfreys 
Fortune, and The Story of Kennett. 

(Born, January 11, 1825; died in Berlin, December 19, 

1878). 



CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR IN GERMANY 

We have lately witnessed the most beautiful and 
interesting of all German festivals — Christmas This is 
here peculiarly celebrated. About the commencement 
of December, the Christmarkt, or fair, was opened 
in the Romerberg, and has continued to the present 
time. The booths, decorated with green boughs, were 
filled with toys of various kinds, among which during 
the first days the figure of St. Nicholas was conspicu- 
ous. There were bunches of wax candles to illuminate 
the Christmas tree, gingerbread with printed mottoes 
in poetry, beautiful little earthenware, basket-work, and 
a wilderness of playthings. The 5th of December, 
being Nicholas evening, the booths were lighted up, 
and the square was filled with boys running from one 
stand to another, all shouting and talking together in 
the most joyous confusion. Nurses were going around 
carrying the smaller children in their arms, and parents 
bought presents decorated with sprigs of pine and 
carried them away. Some of the shops had beautiful 
toys — as, for instance, a whole grocery store in min- 
iature, with barrels, boxes and drawers all filled with 
sweetmeats, a kitchen with a stove and all suitable 
utensils which could really be used, and sets of dishes 

16 



BAYARD TAYLOR 17 

of the most diminutive patterns. All was a scene 0/ 
activity and joyous feeling. 

Many of the tables had bundles of rods with gilded 
bands, which were to be used that evening by the 
persons who represented St. Nicholas. In the family 
with whom we reside one of our German friends 
dressed himself very comically with a mask, fur robe, 
and long tapering cap. He came in with a bunch of 
rods and a sack, and a broom for a sceptre. After we 
all had received our share of the beating he threw the 
contents of his bag on the table, and while we were 
scrambling for the nuts and apples gave us smart raps 
over the fingers. In many families the children are 
made to say, "I thank you, Herr Nicolaus," and the 
rods are hung up in the room till Christmas to keep 
them in good behavior. This was only a forerunner 
of the Christ-kindchen's coming. The Nicolaus is the 
punishing spirit ; the Christ-kindchen, the rewarding 
one. 

When this time was over, we all began preparing 
secretly our presents for Christmas. Every day there 
were consultations about the things which should be 
obtained. It was so arranged that all should inter- 
change presents, but nobody must know beforehand 
what he would receive. What pleasure there was in 
all these secret purchases and preparations ! Scarcely 
anything was thought or spoken of but Christmas, and 
every day the consultations became more numerous and 
secret. The trees were bought some time beforehand, 
but as we were to witness the festival for the first 
time, we were not* allowed to see them prepared, in 



i8 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

order that the effect might be as great as possible. 
The market in the Romerberg Square grew constantly 
larger and more brilliant. Every night it was lit up 
with lamps and thronged with people. Quite a forest 
sprang up in the street before our door. The old 
stone house opposite with the traces of so many cen- 
turies on its dark face seemed to stand in the midst 
of a garden. It was a pleasure to go out every evening 
and see the children rushing to and fro, shouting and 
seeking out toys from the booths, and talking all the 
time of the Christmas that was so near. The poor 
people went by with their little presents hid under 
their cloaks lest their children might see them ; every 
heart was glad and every countenance wore a smile 
of secret pleasure. 

Finally the day before Christmas arrived. The 
streets were so full I could scarce make my way 
through, and the sale of trees went on more rapidly 
than ever. These were commonly branches of pine 
or fir set upright in a little miniature garden of moss. 
When the lamps were lighted at night, our street had 
the appearance of an illuminated garden. We were 
prohibited, from entering the rooms up stairs in which 
the grand ceremony was to take place, being obliged to 
take our seats in those arranged for the guests, and 
wait with impatience the hour when Christ-kindchen 
should call. Several relations of the family came, and 
what was more agreeable, they brought with them five 
or six children. I was anxious to see how they would 
view the ceremony. 

Finally, in the middle of an interesting conversa- 



BAYARD TAYLOR 19 

tion, we heard the bell ringing up stairs. We all 
started up and made for the door. I ran up the steps 
with the children at my heels, and at the top met a 
blaze of light coming from the open door that dazzled 
me. In each room stood a great table on which the 
presents were arranged amid flowers and wreaths. 
From the center rose the beautiful Christmas tree, 
covered with wax tapers to the very top, which made 
it nearly as light as day, while every bough was hung 
with sweetmeats and gilded nuts. The children ran 
shouting around the table, hunting their presents, 
while the older persons had theirs pointed out to them. 
I had quite a little library of German authors as my 
share, and many of the others received quite valuable 
gifts. But how beautiful was the heartfelt joy that 
shone on every countenance ! As each one discovered 
he embraced the giver and all was a scene of the purest 
feelings. It is a glorious feast, this Christmas-time. 
What a chorus from happy hearts went up on that 
evening to Heaven ! Full of poetry and feeling and 
glad associations, it is here anticipated with joy and 
leaves a pleasant memory behind it. We may laugh 
at such simple festivals at home and prefer to shake 
ourselves loose from every shackle that bears the rust 
of the past, but we would certainly be happier if some 
of these beautiful old customs were better honored. 
They renew the bond of feeling between families and 
friends and strengthen their kindly sympathy ; even 
lifelong friends require occasions of this kind to 
freshen the wreath that binds them together. 

New Year's eve is also favored with a peculiar 



20 HOME AUTHORS— PEXXSYLVAXIA 

celebration in Germany. Everybody remains up and 
makes himself merry till midnight. The Christmas 
trees are again lighted, aad while the tapers are burn- 
ing down, the family play for articles which they have 
purchased and hung on the boughs. It is so arranged 
that each one shall win as much as he gives, which 
change of articles makes much amusement. One of the 
ladies rejoiced' in the possession of a red silk handker- 
chief and a cake of soap, while a cup and saucer and 
a pair of scissors fell to my lot. As midnight drew 
near it was louder in the streets, and companies of 
people, some of them singing in chorus, passed by on 
their way to the Zeil. Finally three-quarters struck, 
the windows were opened and every one waited 
anxiously for the clock to strike. At the first sound 
such a cry arose as one may imagine when thirty or 
forty thousand persons all set their lungs going at 
once. Every body in the house, in the street, over the 
whole city, shouted "Prost Neu Jahr!" In families 
all the members embrace each other, with wishes of 
happiness for the new year. Then the windows are 
thrown open, and they cry to their neighbors or those 
passing by. 

After we had exchanged congratulations, Dennett, 

B and I set out for the Zeil. The streets were full 

of people, shouting to one another and to those stand- 
ing at the open windows. We failed not to cry, "Prost 
Neu Jahr !" wherever we saw a damsel at the window, 
and the words came back to us more musically than 
we sent them. Along the Zeil the spectacle was most 
singular. The great wide street was filled with com- 



BAYARD TAYLOR 21 

panies of men marching up and down, while from the 
mass rang up one deafening, unending shout that 
seemed to pierce the black sky above. The whole 
scene looked stranger and wilder from the flickering 
light of the swinging lamps, and I could not help 
thinking it must resemble a night in Paris during the 
French Revolution. We joined the crowd and used 
our lungs as well as any of them. For some time after 
we returned home, companies passed by singing "With 
us 'tis ever so!" but at three o'clock all was again 
silent. 

— Views Afoot. 



Used by permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons, of New 
York and London. 



MY FRIENDSHIP WITH WILD ANIMALS IN 
THE NILE COUNTRY 

There were other features of the place, however, 
which it would be difficult to find anywhere except in 
Central Africa. After I had taken possession of my 
room, and eaten breakfast with my host, I w r ent out to 
look at the garden. On each side of the steps leading 
down from the door sat two apes, who barked and 
snapped at me. The next thing I saw was a leopard 
tied to the trunk of an orange-tree. I did not dare to 
go within reach of his rope, although I afterwards be- 
came well acquainted with him. A little farther, there 
was a pen full of gazelles and an antelope with im- 
mense horns ; then two fierce, bristling hyenas ; and 
at last, under a shed beside the stable, a full-grown 
lioness, sleeping in the shade. I was greatly surprised 
when the Consul went up to her, lifted up her head, 
opened her jaws so as to show the shining white tusks, 
and finally sat down upon her back. 

She accepted these familiarities so good-naturedly 
that I made bold to pat her head also. In a day or so 
we were great friends ; she would spring about with 
delight whenever she saw me, and would purr like a 
cat whenever I sat down upon her back. I spent an 

22 



BAYARD TAYLOR 23 

hour or two every day among the animals, and found 
them all easy to tame except the hyenas, which would 
gladly have bitten me if I had allowed them a chance. 
The leopard, one day, bit me slightly in the hand ; but I 
punished him by pouring several buckets of water over 
him, and he was always very amiable after that. The 
beautiful little gazelles would cluster around me, thrust- 
ing up their noses into my hand, and saying, "Wow [ 
Wow!" as plainly as I write it, but none of these 
animals attracted me so much as the big lioness. She 
was always good-natured, though occasionally so lazy 
that she would not even open her eyes when I sat down 
on her shoulder. She would sometimes catch my foot 
in her paws as a kitten catches a ball, and try to make 
a plaything of it, — yet always without thrusting out her 
claws. Once she opened her mouth, and gently took 
one of my legs in her jaws for a moment ; and the very 
next instant she put out her tongue and licked my hand. 
There seemed to be almost as much of the dog as of 
the cat in her nature. We all know, however, that 
there are differences of character among animals, as 
there are among men ; and my favorite probably be- 
longed to a virtuous and respectable family of lions. 

The day after my arrival I went with the Consul 
to visit the Pasha, who lived in a large mud palace 
on the bank of the Blue Nile. He received us very 
pleasantly, and invited us to take seats in the shady 
courtyard. Here there was a huge panther tied to 
one of the pillars, while a little lion, about eight months 
old, ran about perfectly loose. The Pasha called the 
latter, which came springing and frisking towards him. 



^4 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

"Now," said he, "we will have some fun." He then 
made the lion lie down behind one of the pillars, and 
called to one of the black boys to go across the court- 
yard on some errand. The lion lay quite still until 
the boy came opposite to the pillar, when he sprang out 
and after him. The boy ran, terribly frightened ; but 
the lion reached him in five or six leaps, sprang upon 
his back and threw him down, and then went back to 
the pillar as if quite satisfied with his exploit. Al- 
though the boy was not hurt in the least, it seemed to 
me like a cruel piece of fun. The Pasha, nevertheless, 
laughed very heartily, and told us that he had himself 
trained the lion to frighten the boys. 

Presently the little lion went away, and when we 
came to look for him, we found him lying on one of 
the tables in- the kitchen of the palace, apparently very 
much interested in watching the cook. The latter told 
us that the animal sometimes took small pieces of meat, 
"but seemed to know that it was not permitted, for he 
would run away afterwards in great haste. What I 
saw of lions during my residence in Khartoum satis- 
fied me that they are not very difficult to tame, — only, 
as they belong to the cat family, no dependence can 
he placed on their good behavior. 

— Boys of Other Countries. 

Used through the courtesy of G. P. Putnam's Sons. 



THE BEDOUIN LOVE SOXG 

From the Desert I come to thee 

On a stallion shod with fire, 
And the winds are left behind 

In the speed of my desire. 
Under thy window I stand. 

And the midnight hears my cry : 
I love thee, I love but thee, 

With a love that shall not die 
Till the sun grows cold, 
And the stars are old, 
And the leaves of the Judgment-Book unfold ! 

Look from thy window and see 

My passion and my pain ; 
I lie on the sands below, 

And I faint in thy disdain. 
Let the night-winds touch thy brow 

With the heat of my burning sigh, 
And melt thee to hear the vow 

Of a love that shall not die 
Till the sun grows cold, 
And the stars are old, 
And the leaves of the Judgment-Book unfold! 



25 



26 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

My steps are nightly driven 

By the fever in my breast, 
To hear from thy lattice breathed 

The word that shall give me rest. 
Open the door of thy heart, 

And open thy chamber door, 
And my kisses shall teach thy lips 

The love that shall fade no more 
Till the sun grows cold, 
And the stars are old, 
And the leaves of the Judgment-Book unfold! 

The Bedouin Love Song is used by special arrangement 
with Houghton Mifflin Company, publishers of Bayard Tay- 
lor's poetical works. 

HOME READING. 

Views Afoot. 
Boys of Other Countries. 
The Story of Kennett. 
Poems of the Orient. 



EDITOR'S NOTE: 

Some of the home reading should be commenced in class 
by the teacher, who, by means of carefully chosen selections, 
can arouse such interest that the pupils will be stimulated 
to finish the book. 

Every school library should own at least one copy of 
one or two of the books recommended under Home Reading 
of the various authors. A discount, in lots, will be allowed 
by any dealer in books. The entire cost will probably not 
exceed thirty dollars. 



THOMAS BUCHANAN READ 
Painter and Poet 

Thomas Read and Bayard Taylor were born in 
the same county, Chester, not far apart. Read was the 
older by almost three years. Later in life, as asso- 
ciates in the same group of writers, they became close 
friends. There is much in the living conditions of 
each that recalls the other. Both left home at an 
early age to see the world. As youths, both wrote 
poetry; both did portrait drawing. Taylor, it is true, 
confined his efforts largely to cartoons, while Read 
became somewhat distinguished in the art of painting. 

Y\ nen fifteen years old Thomas wandered to Cin- 
cinnati, where he procured the make-shift of a living 
by painting portraits in a little studio which he opened. 
Unsuccessful at this, he again became a wanderer, 
tramping from village to village, painting store signs 
and an occasional portrait. Often he would add to his 
scanty supply of money by giving a public entertain- 
ment with his pencil and brush. After four years of 
this adventurous life, he returned East and passed the 
next nine years in New York, Boston, and Phila- 
delphia. 

At the age of twenty-five he published his first 

27 



28 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

volume of poetry. He seems not to have experienced 
the severe struggles against poverty which were ever 
present in the youth of Taylor, for he visited Europe 
shortly after producing this book. Three years later he 
was again on the Continent, studying art amid the 
famous paintings in Florence and Rome. He died in 
New York, although he spent many of his last years 
in Rome. 

His paintings today are almost forgotten. They 
deal with allegorical and mythical fancies. However, 
his fame is secure in the hearts of school boys and 
girls, not for the amount of poetry which he produced, 
but for the intensity of his patriotic verses. Long 
will he be remembered as the author of Sheridan's 
Ride. 

(Born, March 12, 1822; died, May 11, 1872). 



SHERIDAN'S RIDE 

Up from the South at break of day, 
Bringing from Winchester fresh dismay, 
The affrighted air with a shudder bore, 
Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door, 
The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar, 
Telling the battle was on once more, 
And Sheridan twenty miles away. 

And wider still those billows of war 
Thundered along the horizon's bar; 
And louder yet into Winchester rolled 
The roar of that red sea uncontrolled, 
Making the blood of the listener cold, 
As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray, 
And Sheridan twenty miles away. 

But there is a road from Winchester town, 

A good broad highway leading down ; 

And there, through the flush of the morning light, 

A steed as black as the steeds of night 

Was seen to pass, as with eagle flight ; 

As if he knew the terrible need, 

He stretched away with his utmost speed. 



29 



30 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

Hills rose and fell — but his heart was gay, 
With Sheridan fifteen miles away. 

Still sprung from those swift hoofs, thundering south, 
The dust like smoke from the cannon's mouth, 
Or the tail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster, 
Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster. 
The heart of the steed and the heart of the master 
Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls, 
Impatient to be where the battle-field calls; 
Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play, 
With Sheridan only ten miles away. 

Under his spurning feet the road 
Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed, 
And the landscape flowed away behind 
Like an ocean flying before the wind, 
And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace ire, 
Swept on, with his wild eye full of fire. 
But lo ! he is nearing his heart's desire ; 
He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray, 
With Sheridan only five miles away. 

The first that the general saw were the groups 
Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops, 
What was done ? what to do ? a glance told him both. 
Then striking his spurs, with a terrible oath, 
He dashed down the line, 'mid a storm of huzzas, 
And the wave of retreat checked its course there, 
because 



THOMAS BUCHANAN READ 31 

The sight of the master compelled it to pause. 
With foam and with dust the black charger was gray ; 
By the flash of his eye and the red nostril's play, 
He seemed to the whole great army to say, 
"I have brought you Sheridan all the way 

From Winchester down to save the day!'' 

Hurrah! Hurrah for Sheridan! 
Hurrah ! Hurrah for horse and man ! 
And when their statues are placed on high 
Under the dome of the Union sky, 
The American soldier's Temple of Fame, — 
There, with the glorious general's name, 
Be it said, in letters both bold and bright, 
"Here is the steed that saved the day 
By carrying Sheridan into the fight, 

From Winchester, twenty miles away!" 

Used by permission of J. B. Lippincott Company. 



HOME READING. 

The Wagoner of the Alleghenies. 



CHARLES GODFREY LELAND 
Journalist, Essayist, and Humorous Poet 

Leland was the first of the Pennsylvania writers 
who attended college, graduating from Princeton when 
he was twenty-two years old. He, too, early developed 
a taste for poetry, writing freely both before and 
during his days at college. For the purpose of 
broadening his views, like many others he also went to 
the Old World, not primarily as a traveler, but as a 
student at the great universities in Heidelberg, 
Munich, and Paris. 

He was interested in peoples, as well as in books. 
Whether by chance or design, his student days in Paris 
came in 1848 — that memorable year of revolutions in 
several European countries. The government of 
Louis Philippe, the "citizen king" who had promised 
so much and granted so little to workmen, had rapidly 
grown in disfavor. The signal for an uprising was 
given, following the refusal of the king to permit a 
public banquet. Events moved rapidly. Leland was 
a member of the mob that assumed control. • The 
frightened king showed no resistance and abdicated. 
A republic (short-lived) was established. Perhaps 
his experience in Paris had aroused a deeper interest 

32 



CHARLES GODFREY LELAND 33 

in human rights, for the same year he returned to 
Philadelphia and studied law. However, he was not to 
practice it, for he gave up the profession in order to 
devote his energy to journalism and literature. 

In later years he passed a long residence in 
London, studying gypsies and the gypsy lore of the 
Continent. His books which are the result of these 
observations are alive with interest. Apart from his 
more serious work, he wrote many humorous poems in 
Pennsylvania-German dialect, under the title of Hans 
Breitmann's Ballads. Odd though it may seem, these 
humorous, divertive poems are his best known con- 
tributions to literature. As a whole, they are not at 
present remarkable either for interest or power, but 
they were the forerunner of excellent contributions in 
the quaint dialect. 

It is well also in passing to note that Leland was 
one of the first men in Pennsylvania, in fact in the 
world, to advocate industrial teaching in the public 
schools. 

Besides the ballads and the gypsy lore, he wrote 
voluminously of legends, traditions, memoirs, travels, 
and translations. A few of his interesting and profit- 
able books Sire The Gypsies, Legends of the Birds, The 
Egyptian Sketchbook, Johnnykin and the Goblins, 
Algonquin Legends of New England, and Meister 
Karl's Sketch-Book. Some of the books are out of 
print, and can be found only in old book stores. 

(Born^ August 15, 1824; died in Florence, Italy, 
March 20, 1903). 



THE CARNIVAL AT ROME 
(As it was acted in the year 1847.) 

There is a broad and beautiful street in Rome 
called the Corso, any part of which presents views 
which might serve for scenes in the theatres. From 
every window in this street, curtains of crimson and 
gold, or of blue and silver, are hung, and the balconies 
which project from every house are similarly adorned. 
These are occupied almost exclusively by beautiful 
women, in every variety of costume which history can 
suggest, caprice invent, or imagination devise. * * * * 

Such is the main business of the Carnival — to ride 
through the Corso in a carriage, or to stand in a 
balcony, exchanging volleys of flowers and sugar- 
plums with the passers-by, and to crowd at night 
into a masked ball or the opera. But the thousand- 
and-one little incidents which serve to interest and 
amuse, while you hardly perceive them — the flirtations 
of a minute — the coquetries of a second — all these, 
unimportant by themselves, taken together, serve ad- 
mirably to dispel the least trace of ennui, and throw 
an air of romance over the whole scene. 

The missiles generally employed during the Carni- 
val are of three sorts, namely — 'The Indifferent," 

34 



CHARLES GODFREY LELAXD 35 

"The Complimentary/' "The Offensive." Among the 
indifferent, I class the plaster sugar-plums. These 
are made either of small balls of clay, or peas, coated 
over with a mixture of lime and water ; and, when 
thrown with energy against any dark object, such as 
a coat or hat, leave a white mark. When the face and 
hands are pelted, or the lime-powder gets into the 
eyes, the sensation is rather painful than otherwise. 
The Papal government, mindful of this fact, issues the 
strictest commands against such missiles being made 
of a larger size than the samples which are deposited 
in the Police Office. These commands are obeyed with 
an accuracy only equalled by that of the Xew York 
and Philadelphia boys in regard to the Fourth-of-July 
edicts against fireworks. 

The complimentary, for the greater part, consist 
of small bouquets which are sold in vast numbers at 
an extremely low price — say a shilling the half-peck. 
To these may be added fancy confectionery of every 
description, as well as artificial flowers. The extrava- 
gance of the Roman ladies and gentlemen, in these 
last two items, passes belief. I seriously believe that 
many a man literally throws away daily, during the 
Carnival, more money than he spends weekly at other 
seasons. But who thinks of prudence or economy at 
such a time? Carnival is short and Lent is long; 
therefore, vive la bagatelle, and hang to-morrow! 
Such is the principle which actuates every one during 
this soul-expanding-week. 

The greater part of a man's happiness at this 
period depends upon the skill and tact which he dis- 



36 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

plays in discharging the last-mentioned class of mis- 
siles. Should he merely fill his carriage with flowers, 
and blindly throw away, right and left, at every girl 
he meets, he may, indeed, stand a chance of getting 
flowers in return ; but the kind looks, the sweet smiles, 
(not to mention the little bags and baskets full of 
sugar-plums), all of these delicate and interesting at- 
tentions will be lost to him. 

What should he do? For the benefit of those 
gentlemen who propose passing the next Carnival at 
Rome, I would say, throw your bouquets at individ- 
uals — and not, as most do, at windows and carriages. 
Always select an individual — catch her eye ; and, hold- 
ing out your bouquet in such a manner as to indicate 
that it is for her alone, toss it gently to her. Having 
done this, you may, with modest confidence, hold out 
your hat to catch anything which she may cast in 
return. 

The indifferent missiles vary in the manner in 
which they are applied. Should they be gently tossed, 
with a sweet smile, we may safely class them among 
the complimentary; but when thrown with violence, 
they are most decidedly offensive. They consist, in 
part, of oranges, lemons, large sugar balls, heavy bon- 
bons, and bouquets in which the stem is the principal 
part. 

The third class of missiles includes potatoes, peb- 
bles, and cabbage-stalks, all of which are contraband. 

The Corso is undoubtedly the headquarters of the 
Carnival ; but it does not by any means monopolize all 
the fun. In order to prevent confusion, carriages are 



CHARLES GODFREY LELAXD 37 

compelled to follow each other in succession, keeping" 
to the left, as the Roman law directs. To return to 
their place, they are obliged to make a detour through 
another street, generally the Ripetta; therefore the 
Ripetta becomes itself the scene of a small carnival. 
Moreover, all those pedestrian masks to whom acting" 
is necessary, in order to freely exhibit the part which 
they have assumed, are obliged to seek a street not over- 
crowded, such as the Ripetta, in order to obtain an 
audience. The visitor, therefore, who wishes to freely 
enjoy the Carnival, must not neglect this street. 

These pedestrian maskers are, to many, the most 
interesting part of the Carnival. Every one is sustain- 
ing a part; and not unfrequently two or three unite 
for this purpose. You will see banditti bending low, 
and stealing with stealthy steps around the corner, 
threatening to rob the unwary passer-by of his last 
sugar-plum. An elderly lady, apparently from the 
country, with a coal-scuttle bonnet and mask admirably 
adapted to express terror and confusion, rushes madly 
through the crowd at right angles, shrieking aloud for 
her lost child. A man bearing his wife on his back, 
and six children hung round, passes by ; you laugh, 
but are deceived by the sight; nor is it until a close 
examination that you discover that, of all this interest- 
ing family, the man is only real — the wife and children 
being composed of papier-mache. 

I observed a party of maskers in a car festooned 
with evergreen, and drawn by a donkey neatly dressed 
for the occasion in white pantaloons and brown coat, 
with his tail in a bag. The unfortunate animal walked 



38 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

along with slow steps, apparently in a dream. He 
was completely confused, bewildered. No longer an 
inhabitant of this world, he was apparently in a 
transition state to that future life where according to 
the Pantagruelist, beasts change conditions with their 
masters. 

Every one at Rome, as I have already intimated, 
either gives or receives flowers during this period. 
But how can this 'apply to young ladies who are 
•doomed, by cruel fate or a cross papa, to sit in third, 
fourth, or even fifth-story windows, and watch the 
passers-by? Roman genius has surmounted this dif- 
ficulty by an astonishing invention. This consists of a 
number of wooden bars, joined together in such a 
manner that when opened their united length is suf- 
ficient to reach the said window ; but when closed and 
lying together parallel, they may be carried without 
difficulty under the arm. To open and shut these in- 
genious contrivances requires skill. When a gentle- 
man wishes to convey a flower or bon-bon to a lady, he 
attaches it to the end of this machine and shoots it 
up to her window. She, detaching it, affixes another, 
which the machine, closing, with a noise like the report 
of a pistol, bears to its master. 

The war with the plaster-plums rages to a terrible 
extent. English gentlemen and ladies are, however, the 
principal actors in this offensive warfare. They are 
the only persons who are so carried away by mad 
excitement and over-hearted enthusiasm, as to literally 
pour plaster by the peck upon passers-by, without dis- 
tinction of age or sex. To protect yourself from 



CHARLES GODFREY LELAXD 39 

such foes, it is necessary to wear a wire mask, a blouse, 
a broad-brimmed white sombrero, and a smiling face, 
(for a Carnival mask doth hardly conceal the features). 
Thus armed and equipped according to universal cus- 
tom, you may bid defiance to a pelting world. The 
Carnival of each day begins at two o'clock, and closes 
just before the Angelus, with a horse-race. The 
steeds — according to the universal custom which has 
given the street its name — run directly through the 
Corso, from the Obelisk to Torlonia's palace. In this 
race, the horses are without riders ; and being goaded 
to the last pitch previous to the start, are urged on by 
the pricking and clattering of the sharp iron plates with 
which they are hung, as well as by the shouts of the 
spectators. So excited do the latter become at this 
spectacle, that it requires the utmost efforts, at the 
close of the race, for the soldiers to prevent them from 
rushing in and stopping the horses. Several times, 
during this present Carnival, men have been very 
seriously wounded by the bayonets of the guard. 

And so it goes on, madder and madder, and 
wilder and wilder, like the witches' festival of a 
Walpurgis night. On the last day, the excitement is 
at its highest pitch. Flowers, bon-bons, and plums are 
thrown, poured, and shot with an unsparing hand. 
The number of carriages is doubled. Multitudes of 
maskers, hitherto unseen, make their appearance ; while 
many of the old stagers vary their dresses in such a 
manner as to give a new interest in the scene. But the 
climax of this delirium appears in the hour succeed- 
ing the race of the last dav. Then, indeed, the traveler 



40 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

will behold a spectacle wilder, stranger, and more excit- 
ing than anything which he has ever before imagined. 

I refer to the ceremony of "Extinguishing the 
Carnival/' as it is termed — a ceremony in which every 
one bears a part. Let us imagine the masking and 
pelting of the day well over, and the revelers returning 
by thousands from the race. Suddenly a noise is heard 
in the direction of the Corso ; and you, perceiving that 
all the maskers are bending their way thither, join 
them. 

As you enter the Corso, a light like that of an 
immense conflagration appears. You press on, and as 
you enter*, a sight meets your eyes, the like of which the 
world cannot furnish. The whole street, more than a 
mile in length, is crowded to suffocation with crowds 
of people, every individual bearing in his hands a 
torch or taper. Lights are flashing from roof and 
balcony, and their glare is reflected from the crimson 
and gold canopies which yet overhang the houses. The 
carriages still continue their course, but their occu- 
pants are holding tapers; and, at intervals, in the 
crowd, you see long poles to which lanterns are hung 
or torches tied. It would seem as if the entire popula- 
tion of Rome were bent on illuminating the Corso to 
the utmost extent. As you gaze, you perceive that 
these lights are continually being extinguished and 
relighted. Every individual appears bent on beating 
out his neighbor's light and preserving his own; and 
against every luckless wight whose tapers are thus 
extinguished, or who appears taperless on the ground, 
the cry of "Senza Moccolo" is raised by his more for- 



CHARLES GODFREY LELAXD 41 

tunate neighbors. These two words, signifying literally, 
"without a candle," are the only ones which are heard. 
Formerly, the cry raised during the "Extinguishment" 
was "Sia ammazato chi non porta moccolo" — "Let him 
who is without a taper be assassinated." But. in these 
days, assassination is becoming unpopular even in 
Rome. i\nd the roar of the voices — which is truly 
overpowering — the red, flashing sheet, appearing in the 
distance like a gulf of fire, and the quaint devices which 
everywhere meet the eye, are enough, in truth, to make 
the spectator believe that all the wildest delusions, the 
maddest magic fantasies of the "House of Wrath," are 
being realized in the city of Rome. 

The lights which are used in the "Senza Moccolo" 
consist of slender wax tapers with large wicks. Several 
of these are twisted together, and a large flame is thus 
produced, which it would be next to impossible to blow 
out with the breath. To effect the extinguishment of 
these, the Roman ties one end of a handkerchief to a 
switch, and thus armed, flaps away right and left. It 
sometimes occurs that, while thus employed, the candle- 
holder catches hold of the handkerchief. In such a 
case, if the captor be a foreigner, it is at once applied 
to the flame and burnt; but if a native, it is quietly 
pocketed. 

One of the most astonishing points in these scenes 
is the perfect good humor which prevails throughout. 
An angry word, or even look, is very rare. "Were 
this thing tried among us," quoth Von Schwartz, my 
companion, from under his sombrero, "there would be 



42 HOME AUTHORS— PEXXSYLVAXIA 

more than ten thousand fights, to the death, in less 
than three minutes. " 

Von Schwartz lost his temper once during the 
"Extinguishment." A very pretty young lady in a 
carriage having dropped her taper, Von Schwartz 
politely relighted it and returned it to her. And what 
did the fair Italian ? She not only blew out his light, 
but actually snatched it from him. 

"Oh, ye Roman ladies !" groaned Von Schwartz, 
"would that Juvenal were alive again, even for your 
sakes !" 

And thus, in tumult and revel and wild uproar, 
ends the Carnival. But nothing strikes the observer 
more than the sudden transition to the gloom and 
silence of Lent. The sun which sets on the wildest 
gayety and confusion, rises on prayer, repentance, and 
fasting. The lord of misrule, who hath borne it 
bravely for a season in miniver and gold, now yields 
his crown to the friar and monk, who, in silent power, 
confess the sins of his followers. And at night when 
I sat alone, I strove to recall many of the events of the 
day ; but in vain, for each memory vanished in a 
vague, wild sensation of indefinable excitement. 

— Meister Karl's Sketch-Book. 

HOME READING. 

Hans Breitmann's Ballads. 
Algonquin Legends of New England. 



STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER 
Poet and Musician 

On a cold night toward the close of December of 
1753, George Washington and his guide, returning to 
Virginia from an expedition into the Ohio Valley to 
report the activities of the French and Indians, were 
cast upon a piece of land along the Allegheny river, 
about three miles above the present city of Pittsburgh. 
On this same tract, on the very day that Thomas Jeffer- 
son and John Adams died — the day also which marked 
the half-century of American freedom — Stephen 
Foster was born. It was in the village of Lawrence- 
ville, named by the father of Stephen in honor of the 
famous captain of the ship Chesapeake. 

The Scotch-Irish ancestors of young Foster 
were pioneers in Western Pennsylvania, in the days 
when the large Conestoga wagons were the vehicles of 
travel. A Foster was one of the first trustees of 
Canonsburg Academy, the first institution of learning 
west of the Alleghany Mountains, since known as 
Jefferson College, and more lately consolidated with 
Washington College. At Jefferson College Stephen re- 
ceived his higher schooling, and when graduated was 
proficient in French, German, and music. 

43 



44 HOME AUTHORS-PENNSYLVANIA 

When he was two years old, he is said to have 
picked out harmonies from the strings of his sister's 
guitar. He called this his "ittly pizanni" (little 
piano). At seven he first saw a flageolet, chanced upon 
in a music store, and in a few minutes he was playing 
in perfect time. Not long afterwards he learned to 
play upon the flute and the piano. With his natural 
genius for music he combined a deep study of the 
masters — Mozart, Beethoven, and Weber. During this 
time also, he was the star performer of a company of 
actors consisting of the boys of the neighborhood, and 
had produced his first published song. Negro melodies 
were popular. Before he was twenty he had written 
the song, Old Uncle Ned, soon famous and sung every- 
where. This was followed by Oh, Susanna, both of 
which were presented to a former music teacher. 

He established a new era in melody and in the 
ballad. Thousands of persons were singing his com- 
positions without even having heard of the youthful 
composer. The grotesque aspect, but his kindly treat- 
ment, of the negro aroused an interest in the lowly 
slave. Very soon requests began to pour in from big 
publishing houses, and he found a ready and profitable 
sale for all of his melodies. 

One day Stephen went into the office of his 
brother in Pittsburgh and inquired the name in two 
syllables of a Southern river. The brother suggested 
Yazoo and Pedee, but neither suited the poet. An 
atlas was brought out and the map of the United States 
examined. The finger of the brother stopped on the 
word "Suwannee," a little river in Florida emptying 



STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER 45 

into the Gulf of Mexico. "That's it exactly," ex- 
claimed Stephen. This incident resulted in Old Folks 
at Home, which begins "Way down upon de Swanee 
ribber." 

A handsome setter, long his constant companion, 
was the original of Old Dog Tray. Hard Times Come 
Again No More preserves memories of childhood days 
when he attended church services with "Lieve," a 
colored girl bound to his father. 

A trip by water from Pittsburgh to New Orleans 
furnished Foster with many incidents of Southern life, 
used by him in ballads. 

His masterpieces are Old Black Joe, Old Folks at 
Home, My Old Kentucky Home, and Massa's in de 
Cold Ground. 

(Born, July 4, 1826; died, January 13, 1864). 



MASSA'S IN DE COLD GROUND 

Round de meadows am a ringing, 

De darkies' mournful song, 
While de mocking bird am singing, 

Happy as de day am long, 
Where de ivy am a creeping, 

O'er de grassy mound, 
Dare old massa am a sleeping, 

Sleeping in de cold, cold ground. 

Down in de corn-field 

Hear dat mournful sound: 

All the darkies am a weeping, 

Massa's in de cold, cold ground. 

When de autumn leaves were falling, 

When de days were cold, 
'Twas hard to hear old massa calling, 

Cayse he was so weak and old. 
Now de orange tree am blooming, 

On de sandy shore, 
Now de summer days am coming, 

Massa nebber calls no more. 



46 



STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER 4 7 

Massa made de darkies love him, 

Cayse he was so kind, 
Now dey sadly weep above him, 

Mourning cayse he leave dem behind. 
I cannot work before to-morrow, 

Cayse de tear-drop flow, 
I try to drive away my sorrow, 

Pickin' on de old banjo. 



Used by permission of H. M. Caldwell Company, New 
York and Boston, publishers of Old Plantation Melodies. 



OLD FOLKS AT HOME 

Way down upon de Swanee ribber, 

Far, far away, 
Dere's wha my heart is turning ebber, 

Dere's wha de old folks stay. 
All up and down de whole creation 

Sadly I roam, 
Still longing for de old plantation, 

And for de old folks at home. 

All de world am sad and dreary, 

Ebry where I roam, 
Oh ! darkies, how my heart grows weary, 

Far from de old folks at home. 

All 'round de little farm I wandered 

When I was young, 
Den many happy days I squandered, 

Many de songs I sung. 
When I was playing wid my brudder, 

Happy was I; 
Oh! take me to my kind old mudder, 

Dere let me live and die. 



48 



STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER 49 

One little hut among de bushes, 

One dat I love, 
Still sadly to my mem'ry rushes, 

No matter where I rove. 
When will T see de bees a humming, 

All 'round de comb? 
When will I hear de banjo tumming, 

Down in my good old home? 

Used by permission of H. M. Caldwell Company, New 
York and Boston, publishers of Old Plantation Melodies. 

HOME READING. 
Old Uncle Ned. 
My Old Kentucky Home. 
Old Dog Tray. 



FRANK R. STOCKTON 
Journalist, Humorous Short Story Writer and Novelist 

Francis Richard Stockton, who wrote under the 
name of Frank, R. Stockton, by which he is known to 
the world, was born in Philadelphia, and received his 
education in the public schools of that city. On com- 
pleting the course of study in the Central High School 
at the age of eighteen, he became a draughtsman and 
engraver. By close application to the details of his 
work, he was soon able to suggest and make some im- 
provements in the art of engraving. 

Tiring of this business, however, he drifted into 
journalism, finding employment on newspapers in 
New York and Philadelphia. This was the beginning 
of his literary career. His experience at engraving 
was helpful in that it gave a ready insight into details 
so essential to one who would plan, plot and develop 
stories. His first tales were written for children, pub- 
lished in magazines, but later collected in a volume 
entitled Ting-a-Ling Stories. On the establishment of 
St. Nicholas, a magazine now read by thousands of 
boys and girls, he became an assistant editor, and was 
instrumental in early attracting popular attention to 
the magazine. 

50 



FRANK R. STOCKTON 51 

In time he withdrew entirely from the business 
problems of magazines to devote the remainder of his 
life to the composition of short stories and novels. To 
promote his efficiency by undisturbed labors, he for- 
sook the noise of the city for the quiet and inspiration 
of a beautiful country home. Everyone delights in 
the first book that he wrote. Rudder Grange, which 
narrates how a young couple kept house on a canal 
boat and took in a boarder. The quaint humorous 
words and actions of Euphemia and Pomona long re- 
call moments of pleasurable reading. 

The humor of Stockton stands alone in literature. 
Many have tried to imitate his methods, but none have 
succeeded. With the ease of one who is recording 
natural events, he places his characters in grotesque 
situations and then allows them to act in a matter-of- 
fact way. An additional charm of his humor consists 
in his ability to confine it to the few pages of a short 
story or to prolong it through a novel. Interesting 
examples of his peculiar gift are found in The Trans- 
ferred Ghost, A Piece of Red Calico, and in the ever 
possible sorrow or joy of The Lady or the Tiger? 
These are found in a volume under the title The Lady 
or the Tiger? And Other Stories. 

To appreciate his marvelous power of sustained 
humor, one should read The Casting away of Mrs. 
Leeks and Mrs. Aleshine. This is undoubtedly Stock- 
ton's masterpiece. An irresistible impulse to laugh 
seizes the reader from the very beginning when these 
two good New England women find themselves in a 



52 HOME AUTHORS— PEXXSYLVAXIA 

sinking life-boat in the middle of the ocean. There 
is not a dull page in the novel. The Dusantes is the 
sequel to this droll story. 

(Born, April 5, 1834; died, April 20, 1902). 



THE TRANSFERRED GHOST 

The country residence of Mr. John Hinckman 
was a delightful place to me, for many reasons. It 
was the abode of a genial, though somewhat impulsive, 
hospitality. It had broad, smooth-shaven lawns and 
towering -oaks and elms ; there were bosky shades at 
several points, and not far from the| house there was 
a little rill spanned by a rustic bridge with the bark 
on; there were fruits and flowers, pleasant people,, 
chess, billiards, rides, walks, and fishing. These were 
great attractions; but none of them, nor all of them 
together, would have been sufficient to hold me to the 
place very long. I had been invited for the trout 
season, but should, probably, have finished my visit 
early in the summer had it not been that upon fair 
days, when the grass was dry, and the sun was not 
too hot, and there was but little wind, there strolled 
beneath the lofty elms, or passed lightly through the 
bosky shades, the form of my Madeline. 

This lady was not, in very truth, my Madeline. 
She had never given herself to me, nor had I, in any 
way, acquired possession of her. But as I considered 
her possession the only sufficient reason for the con- 
tinuance of my existence, I called her, in my reveries, 

53 



54 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

mine. It may have been that I would not have been 
obliged to confine the use of this possessive pronoun to 
my reveries had I confessed the state of my feelings to 
the lady. 

But this was an unusually difficult thing to do. 
Not only did I dread, as almost all lovers dread, taking 
the step which would in an instant put an end to that 
delightful season which may be termed the ante-inter- 
rogatory period of love, and which might at the same 
time terminate all intercourse or connection with the 
object of my passion; but I was, also, dreadfully afraid 
of John Hinckman. This gentleman was a good friend 
of mine, but it would have required a bolder man than 
I was at that time to ask him for the gift of his niece, 
who was the head of his household, and, according to 
his own frequent statement, the main prop of his de- 
clining years. Had Madeline acquiesced in my general 
views on the subject, I might have felt encouraged to 
open the matter to Mr. Hinckman; but, as I said be- 
fore, I had never asked her whether or not she would 
be mine. I thought of these things at all hours of the 
day and night, particularly the latter. 

I was lying awake one night, in the great bed in 
my spacious chamber, when, by the dim light of the 
new moon, which partially filled the room, I saw John 
Hinckman standing by a large chair near the door. I 
was very much surprised at this for two reasons. In 
the first place, my host had never before come into my 
room; and, in the second place, he had gone from 
home that morning, and had not expected to return 
for several days. It was for this reason that I had 



FRANK R. STOCKTON 55 

been able that evening to sit much later than usual 
with Madeline on the moonlit porch. The figure was 
certainly that of John Hinckman in his ordinary dress, 
but there was a vagueness and indistinctness about it 
which presently assured me that it was a ghost. Had 
the good old man been murdered? and had his spirit 
come to tell me of the deed, and to confide to me the 

protection of his dear ? My heart fluttered at 

what I was about to think, but at this instant the figure 
spoke. 

"Do you know," he said, with a countenance that 
indicated anxiety, "if Mr. Hinckman will return to- 
night?" 

I thought it well to maintain a calm exterior, and 
I answered, — 

"We do not expect him." 

"I am glad of that," said he, sinking into the 
chair by which he stood. "During the two years and 
a half that I have inhabited this house, that man 
has never before been away for a single night. You 
can't imagine the relief it gives me." 

And as he spoke he stretched out his legs, and 
leaned back in the chair. His form became less vague, 
and the colors of his garments more distinct and 
evident, while an expression of gratified relief suc- 
ceeded to the anxiety of his countenance. 

"Two years and a half!" I exclaimed. "I don't 
understand you." 

"It is fully that length of time," said the ghost, 
"since I first came here. Mine is not an ordinary 
case. But before I say any thing more about it, let 



56 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

me ask you again if you are sure Mr. Hinckman will 

not return to-night." 

"I am as sure of it as I can be of any thing," I 
answered. "He left to-day for Bristol, two hundred 
miles away." 

"Then I will go on," said the ghost, "for I am 
glad to have the opportunity of talking to some one 
who will listen to me ; but if John Hinckman should 
come in and catch me here, I should be frightened out 
of my wits." 

"This is all very strange," I said, greatly puzzled 
b>y what I had heard. "Are you the ghost of Mr. 
Hinckman?" 

This was a bold question, but my mind was so full 
of other emotions that there seemed to be no room 
for that of fear. 

"Yes, I am his ghost," my companion replied, 
^'and yet I have no right to be. And this is what makes 
me so uneasy, and so much afraid of him It is a 
strange story, and, I truly believe, without precedent. 
Two years and a half ago, John Hinckman was dan- 
gerously ill in this very room. At one time he was so 
far gone that he was really believed to be dead. It 
was in consequence of too precipitate a report in 
regard to this matter that I was, at that time, ap- 
pointed to be his ghost. Imagine my surprise and 
Tiorror, sir, when, after I had accepted the position 
and assumed its responsibilities, that old man revived, 
became convalescent, and eventually regained his usual 
health. My situation was now one of extreme delicacy 
and embarrassment. I had no power to return to my 



FRANK R. STOCKTON 57 

original unembodiment, and I had no right to be the 
ghost of a man who was not dead. I was advised by 
my friends to quietly maintain my position, and was 
assured that, as John Hinckman was an elderly man, 
it could not be long before I could rightfully assume 
the position for which I had been selected. But I tell 
you, sir," he continued, with animation, "the old fellow 
seems as vigorous as ever, and I have no idea how 
much longer this annoying state of things will continue. 
I spend my time trying to get out of that old man's 
way. I must leave this house, and he seems to follow 
me everywhere. I tell you, sir, he haunts me." 

"Of course he couldn't," said the ghost. "But 
his very presence is a shock and terror to me. Imagine, 
sir, how you would feel if my case were yours." 

I could not imagine such a thing at all. I simply 
shuddered. 

"And if one must be a wrongful ghost at all," the 
apparition continued, "it would be much pleasanter to 
be the ghost of some man other than John Hinckman. 
There is in him an irascibility of temper, accompanied 
by a facility of invective, which is seldom met with. 
And what would happen if he were to see me, and 
find out, as I am sure he would, how long and why I 
had inhabited his house, I can scarcely conceive. I have 
seen him in his bursts of passion; and, although he 
did not hurt the people he stormed at any more than he 
would hurt me, they seemed to shrink before him." 

All this I knew to be very true. Had it not been 
for this peculiarity of Mr. Hinckman, I might have 
been more willing to talk to him about his niece. 



58 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

"I feel sorry for you," I said, for I really began to 
have a sympathetic feeling toward this unfortunate 
apparition. "Your case is indeed a hard one. It re- 
minds me of those persons who have had doubles, 
and I suppose a man would often be angry indeed 
when he found that there was another being who was 
personating himself." 

"Oh ! the cases are not similar at all," said the 
ghost. "A double or doppel ganger lives on the earth 
with a man; and, being exactly like him, he makes all 
sorts of trouble, of course. It is very different with 
me. I am not here to live with Mr. Hinckman. I am 
here to take his place. Now, it would make John 
Hinckman very angry if he knew that. Don't you 
know it would?" 

I assented promptly. 

"Now that he is away I can be easy for a little 
while," continued the ghost; "and I am so glad to have 
an opportunity of talking to you. I have frequently 
come into your room, and watched you while you 
slept, but did not dare to speak to you for fear that 
if you talked with me Mr. Hinckman would hear 
you, and come into the room to know why you were 
talking to yourself." 

"But would he not hear you?" I asked. 

"Oh, no!" said the other: "there are times when 
any one may see me, but no one hears me except the 
person to whom I address myself." 

"But why did you wish to speak to me?" I asked. 

"Because," replied the ghost, "I like occasionally 
to talk to people, and especially to some one like your- 



FRANK R. STOCKTON 59 

self, whose mind is so troubled and perturbed that 
you are not likely to be frightened by a visit from 
one of us. But I particularly wanted to ask you to do 
me a favor. There is every probability, so far as I can 
see, that John Hinckman will live a long time, and my 
situation is becoming insupportable. My great object 
at present is to get myself transferred, and I think that 
you may, perhaps, be of use to me." 

"Transferred!" I exclaimed. "What do you 
mean by that?" 

"What I mean," said the other, "is this. Now 
that I have started on my career I have got to be the 
ghost of somebody, and I want to be the ghost of a 
man who is really dead." 

"I should think that would be easy enough," I 
said. "Opportunities must continually occur." 

"Not at all! not at all!" said my companion 
quickly. "You have no idea what a rush and pressure 
there is for situations of this kind. Whenever a 
vacancy occurs, if I may express myself in that way, 
there are crowds of applications for the ghostship." 

"I had no idea that such a state of things existed," 
I said, becoming quite interested in the matter. "There 
ought to be some regular system, or order of preced- 
ence, by which you could all take your turns like 
customers in a barber's shop." 

"Oh dear, that would never do at all!" said the 
other. "Some of us would have to wait forever. There 
is always a great rush whenever a good ghostship 
offers itself — while, as you know, there are some 
positions that no one would care for. And as it was 



60 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

in consequence of my being in too great a hurry on an 
occasion of the kind that I got myself into my present 
disagreeable predicament, I have thought that it 
might be possible that you would help me out of it. 
You might know of a case where an opportunity for a 
ghostship was not generally expected, but which might 
present itself at any moment. If you would give me 
a short notice, I know I could arrange for a transfer." 

"What do you mean?" I exclaimed. "Do you 
want me to commit suicide? Or to undertake a 
murder for your benefit ?" 

"Oh, no, no, no!" said the other, with a vapory 
smile. "I mean nothing of that kind. To be sure, 
there are lovers who are watched with considerable 
interest, such persons having been known in moments 
of depression, to offer very desirable ghostships; but 
I did not think anything of that kind in connection 
with you. You were the only person I cared to speak 
to, and I hoped that you might give me some informa- 
tion that would be of use ; and, in return, I shall be 
very glad to help you in your love affair." 

"You seem to know that I have such an affair," 
I said. 

"Oh, yes !" replied the other, with a little yawn 
"I could not be here so much as I have been without 
knowing all about that." 

There was something horrible in the idea of 
Madeline and myself having been watched by a ghost, 
even, perhaps, when we wandered together in the most 
delightful and bosky places. But, then, this was quite 
an exceptional ghost, and I could not have the objec- 



FRANK R. STOCKTON 61 

tion to him which would ordinarily arise in regard 
to beings of his class. 

"I must go now," said the ghost, rising, "but I 
will see you somewhere to-morrow night. And re- 
member — you help me, and I'll help you." 

I had doubts the next morning as to the propriety 
of telling Madeline anything about this interview, and 
soon convinced myself that I must keep silent on the 
subject. If she knew there was a ghost about the 
house, she would probably leave the place instantly. I 
did not mention the matter, and so regulated my de- 
meanor that I am quite sure Madeline never suspected 
what had taken place. For some time I had wished 
that Mr. Hinckman would absent himself, for a day at 
least, from the premises. In such case I thought I 
might more easily nerve myself up to the point of 
speaking to Madeline on the subject of our future 
collateral existence; and, now that the opportunity for 
such speecli had really occurred, I did not feel ready to 
avail myself of it. What would become of me if she 
refused me? 

I had an idea, however, that the lady thought that, 
if I were going to speak at all, this was the time. She 
must have known that certain sentiments were afloat 
within me, and she was not unreasonable in her wish 
to see the matter settled one way or the other. But I 
did not feel like taking a bold step in the dark. If she 
wished me to ask her to give herself to me, she ought 
to offer me some reason to suppose that she would 
make the gift. If I saw no probability of such gen- 



62 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

erosity, I would prefer that things should remain as 
they were. 

That evening I was sitting with Madeline on the 
moonlit porch. It was nearly ten o'clock, and ever 
since supper-time I had been working myself up to the 
point of making an avowal of my sentiments. I had 
not positively determined to do this, but wished grad- 
ually to reach the proper point, when, if the prospect 
looked bright, I might speak. My companion appeared 
to understand the situation — at least, I imagined that 
the nearer I came to a proposal the more she seemed to 
expect it. It was certainly a very critical and impor- 
tant epoch in my life. If I spoke I should make myself 
happy or miserable forever; and if I did not speak I 
had every reason to believe that the lady would not 
give me another chance to do so. 

Sitting thus with Madeline, talking a little, and 
thinking very hard over these momentous matters, I 
looked up and saw the ghost, not a dozen feet away 
from us. He was sitting on the railing of the porch, 
one leg thrown up before him, the other dangling down 
as he leaned against a post. He was behind Madeline, 
but almost in front of me, as I sat facing the lady. 
It w T as fortunate that Madeline was looking out over 
the landscape, for I must have appeared very much 
startled. The ghost had told me that he would see 
me some time this night, but I did not think he would 
make his appearance when I was in the company of 
Madeline. If she should see the spirit of her uncle, 
I could not answer for the consequences. I made no 



FRANK R. STOCKTON 63 

exclamation, but the ghost evidently saw that I was 
troubled. 

"Don't be afraid," he said — "I shall not let her 
see me ; and she cannot hear me speak unless I address 
myself to 'her, which I do not intend to do." 

I suppose I looked grateful. 

"So you need not trouble yourself about that," the 
ghost continued; "but it seems to me that you are not 
getting along very well with your affair. If I were 
you, I should speak out without waiting any longer. 
You will never have a better chance. You are not 
likely to be interrupted; and, so far as I can judge, the 
lady seems disposed to listen to you favorably ; that is, 
if she ever intends to do so. There is no knowing 
when John Hinckman will go away again; certainly 
not this summer. If I were in your place, I should 
never dare to make love to Hinckman's niece if he 
were anywhere about the place. If he should catch any 
one offering himself to Miss Madeline, he would then 
be a terrible man to encounter/' 

I agreed perfectly to all this. 

"I cannot bear to think of him!" I ejaculated 
aloud. 

"Think of whom?" asked Madeline, turning quick- 
ly toward me. 

Here was an awkward situation. The long speech 
of the ghost, to which Madeline paid no attention, but 
which I heard with perfect distinctness, had made me 
forget myself. 

It was necessary to explain quickly. Of course, 
it would not do to admit it was of her dear uncle that 



64 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

I was speaking; and so I mentioned hastily the first 
name I thought of. 

"Mr. Vilars," I said. 

This statement was entirely correct; for I never 
could bear to think of Mr. Vilars, who was a gentle- 
man who had, at various times, paid much attention to 
Madeline. 

"It is wrong for you to speak in that way of 
Mr. Vilars," she said. "He is a remarkably well edu- 
cated and sensible young man, and has very pleasant 
manners. He expects to be elected to the legislature 
this fall, and I should not be surprised if he made his 
mark. He will do well in a legislative body, for when- 
ever Mr. Vilars has anything to say he knows just 
how and when to say it." 

This was spoken very quietly, and without any 
show of resentment, which was all very natural, for if 
Madeline thought at all favorably of me she could not 
feel displeased that I should have disagreeable emotions 
in regard to a possible rival. The concluding words 
contained a hint which I was not slow to understand. 
I felt very sure that if Mr. Vilars were in my present 
position he would speak quickly enough. 

"I know it is wrong to have such ideas about a 
person," I said, "but I cannot help it." 

The lady did not chide me, and after this she 
seemed even in a softer mood. As for me, I felt con- 
siderably annoyed, for I had not wished to admit that 
any thought of Mr. Vilars had ever occupied my mind. 

"You should not speak aloud that way," said the 
ghost, "or you may get yourself into trouble. I want 



FRANK R. STOCKTOX 65 

to see everything go well with you, because then you 
may be disposed to help me, especially if I should 
chance to be of any assistance to you, which I hope 
I shall be." 

I longed to tell him that there was no way in 
which he could help me so much as by taking his instant 
departure. To make love to a young lady with a ghost 
sitting on the railing near by, and that ghost the ap- 
parition of a much-dreaded uncle, the very idea of 
whom in such a position and at such a time made me 
tremble, was a difficult, if not an impossible, thing to 
do ; but I forbore to speak, although I may have looked 
my mind. 

"I suppose," continued the ghost, "that you have 
not heard anything that might be of advantage to 
me. Of course, I am very anxious to hear; but if you 
have anything to tell me, I can wait until you are 
alone. I will come to you to-night in your room, or 
I will stay here until the lady goes away." 

"You need not wait here," I said; "I have nothing 
at all to say to you." 

Madeline sprang to her feet, her face flushed and 
her eyes ablaze. 

"Wait here !" she cried. "What do you suppose I 
am waiting for? Nothing to say to me indeed! — I 
should think so ! What should you have to say to me?" 

"Madeline," I exclaimed, stepping toward her, "let 
me explain." 

But she had gone. 

Here was the end of the world for me ! I turned 
fiercely to the ghost. 



66 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

"Wretched existence !" I cried. "You have ruined 
everything. You have blackened my whole life. Had 
it not been for you" — 

But there my voice faltered. I could say no more. 

"You wrong me," said the ghost. "I have not 
injured you. I have tried to assist you, and it is your 
own folly that has done this mischief. But do not 
despair. Such mistakes as these can be explained. 
Keep up a brave heart. Good-bye." 

And he vanished from the railing like a bursting 
soap-bubble. 

I went gloomily to bed, but I saw no apparitions 
that night except those of despair and misery which my 
wretched thoughts called up. The words I had uttered 
had sounded to Madeline like the basest insult. Of 
course, there was only one interpretation she could 
put upon them. 

As to explaining my ejaculation, that was im- 
possible. I thought the matter over and over again as I 
I lay awake that night, and I determined that I would 
never tell Madeline the facts of the case. It would 
be better for me to suffer all my life than for her to 
know that the ghost of her uncle haunted the house. 
Mr. Hinckman was away, and if she knew of his 
ghost she could not be made to believe that he was not 
dead. She might not survive the shock ! No. my heart 
could bleed, but I would never tell her. 

The next day was fine, neither too cool nor too 
warm ; the breezes were gentle, and nature smiled. But 
there were no walks or rides with Madeline. She 
seemed to be much engaged during the day, and I saw 






FRAXK R. STOCKTON 67 

but little of her. When we met at meals she was polite, 
but very quiet and reserved. She had evidently deter- 
mined on a course of conduct, and had resolved to 
assume that, although I had been very rude to her, she 
did not understand the import of my words. It would 
be quite proper, of course, for her not to know what 
I meant by my expressions of the night before. 

I was downcast and wretched, and said but little, 
and the only bright streak across the black horizon of 
my woe was the fact that she did not appear to be 
happy, although she affected an air of unconcern. The 
moonlit porch was deserted that evening, but wander- 
ing about the house I found Madeline in the library 
alone. She was reading, but I went in and sat down 
near her. I felt that, although I could not do so fully, 
I must in a measure explain my conduct of the night 
before. She listened quietly to a somewhat labored 
apology I made for the words I had used. - 

"I have not the slightest idea what you meant," 
she said, "but you were very rude." 

I earnestly disclaimed any intention of rudeness, 
and assured her, with a warmth of speech that must 
have made some impression upon her, that rudeness to 
her would be an action impossible to me. I said a 
great deal upon the subject, and implored her to be- 
lieve that if it were not for a certain obstacle I could 
speak to her so plainly that she would understand 
everything. 

She was silent for a time, and then she said, rather 
more kindly, I thought, than she had spoken before : 



68 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

"Is that obstacle in any way connected with my 
uncle?" 

"Yes," I answered, after a little hesitation, "it 
is, in a measure, connected with him." 

She made no answer to this, and sat looking at 
her book, but not reading. From the expression of 
her face, I thought she was somewhat softened toward 
me. She knew her uncle as well as I did, and she may 
have been thinking that, if he were the obstacle that 
prevented my speaking (and there were many ways in 
which he might be that obstacle), my position would 
be such a hard one that it would excuse some wildness 
of speech and eccentricity of manner. I saw, too, that 
the warmth of my partial explanation had had some 
effect on her, and I began to believe that it might be a 
good thing for me to speak my mind without delay. 
No matter how she should receive my proposition, my 
relations with her could not be worse than they had 
been the previous night and day, and there was some- 
thing in her face which encouraged me to hope that she 
might forget my foolish exclamations of the evening 
before if I began to tell her my tale of love. 

I drew my chair a little nearer to her, and as I 
did so the ghost burst into the room from the door- 
way behind her, I say burst, although no door flew open 
and he made no noise. He was wildly excited, and 
waved his arms above his head. The moment I saw 
him, my heart fell within me. With the entrance of 
that impertinent apparition, every hope fled from me. 
I could not speak while he was in the room. 

I must have turned pale; and I gazed steadfastly 



FRANK R. STOCKTON 69 

at the ghost, almost without seeing Madeline, who 
sat between us. 

"Do you know/' he cried, "that John Hinckman is 
coming up the hill ? He will be here in fifteen minutes ; 
and if you are doing anything in the way of love- 
making, you had better hurry up. But this is not 
what I came to tell you. I have glorious news ! At last 
I am transferred! Not forty minutes ago a Russian 
nobleman was murdered by the Nihilists. Nobody 
ever thought of him in connection with an immediate 
ghostship. My friends instantly applied for the sit- 
uation for me, and obtained my transfer. I am off 
before that horrid Hinckman comes up the hill. The 
moment I reach my new position, I shall put off this 
hated semblance. Good-by. You can't imagine how 
glad I am to be, at last, the real ghost of somebody." 

"Oh!" I cried, rising to my feet, and stretching 
out my arms in utter wretchedness, "I would to Heaven 
you were mine !" 

"I am yours," said Madeline, raising to me her 
tearful eyes. 

— The Lady or the Tiger? And Other Stories. 

Used by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons. 



HOME BEADING. 

The Lady or the Tiger? And Other Stories. 

The Casting Away of Mrs. Leeks and Mrs. Aleshine. 

Rudder Grange. 



S. WEIR MITCHELL 
Physician and Novelist 

The great figure in the literary life of Philadelphia 
at the present time is Silas Weir Mitchell. Born in 
Philadelphia nearly eighty-five years ago, he has 
always claimed that city as his home. While in the 
Senior Class at the University of Pennsylvania, he 
was compelled to drop his studies because of illness; 
but later he completed the course in the Jefferson 
Medical College. Like the famous Dr. Oliver Wendell 
Holmes, he practiced medicine for a living, but his 
heart turned toward literature; not that Dr. Mitchell 
is not fond of medicine. He is. As a physician he has 
become a renowned specialist in nervous diseases. He 
delights in any study or labor which is beneficial to 
mankind. 

Unlike most men of literature, Dr. Mitchell was 
past the period of youth when he experimented in the 
iield of imaginative writing. At fifty years of age he 
was an eminent physician and contributor on medical 
subjects, but unknown to the great literary world of 
which he was later to become so distinguished a part. 
He holds honorary degrees from many of the leading 

70 



S. WEIR MITCHELL ;r 

universities, both in this country and in Europe, for 
researches in medicine and for contributions in fiction. 

He is a man of many public interests — the head 
of a hospital, a member of a dozen or more English,. 
French, and German societies of arts and sciences, a 
trustee of universities, and a lecturer. For years he 
has been a leader at the Franklin Inn, the literary club 
of Philadelphia. 

His life devoted to wide activities, he exacts from 
himself hours designated regularly for writing. This 
he has followed for years. He often rewrites a com- 
position four or five times before allowing it to go to 
the publisher; in fact, several of his books have been 
printed and bound for his private corrections before 
final publication, in order that he might get a much 
better idea of the construction, form, and style. This 
means vast labor, particularly for a busy man. 

Among Dr. Mitchell's best books for young people 
are A Venture in 1777, which is the story of how a 
boy aided the Patriots at Valley Forge; Mr. Kris 
Kringle, The Youth of Washington, The Adventures 
of Francois, for those who enjoy French history; and 
Hugh Wynne, an historical novel of Revolutionary 
days which makes the heart of young and old beat fast 
with adventure and love. Older persons will enjoy 
The Autobiography of a Quack, which relates the ad- 
ventures that befell an ignorant, unscrupulous prac- 
titioner of medicine. Boys and girls who have a good 
knowledge of physiology will like The Case of George 
Dedlow. For a long time this was accepted as a real 



~2 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

case by the readers of The Atlantic Monthly in which 
it first appeared. Dr. North and His Friends is a good 
book. 

It is worthy of note that one of the sons of Dr. 
Mitchell, Langdon Elwyn Mitchell, (born in Philadel- 
phia on February 17, 1862), is a poet and writer of 
plays tinder the pen-name of "John Philip Varley." 
He is the author of Becky Sharp (a play). 

(Born, February 15, 1829; living). 



A VENTURE IN 1777 



Just as they (the boys) were going noisily to bed 
a servant came in and said an orderly was without. 
He gave a paper to Verney, who awakened the Colonel 
and gave him a letter. 

The Colonel rubbed his eyes and looked at it. "I 
hoped they had forgotten. Here are our orders to in- 
spect the lines to-morrow on Mount Airy and Chest- 
nut Hill." 

"And here/' said Verney, "is Montresor's map of 
the forts in and about the city. He promised me to 
send it as a guide to the outlying works." The twins 
having gone, Tom lingered unnoticed. 

"Let me see the map," said the Colonel. They 
spread it on the table and began to consider it. 

"May I look?" asked Tom, as usual, curious. 

"Certainly," said Verney. "I will explain it to 
you. See, here are bastions and these dots the cannon. 
Here is the tete du pont, a work to defend the upper 
ferry." 

"It is rather droll to me," said Count Einstein. 
"Eighteen thousand men ought to be bastions enough." 

"Not for Sir William," laughed Verney. 

73 



74 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

"It is Montresor's own copy/' said Grimstone. "It 
is signed. " 

"I should be pretty careful of it," said the Count,, 
a brave and well-trained soldier. 

This readiness to explain the plans to Mrs. Mark- 
ham and her interested boy seemed to him unwise. 
More than once full knowledge of contemplated army 
movements had in some mysterious way reached the 
snow-bound enemy. 

Mrs. Markham stood by looking over Tom's 
shoulder, and presently said, "It is quite incomprehen- 
sible to me. Do you understand it, Tom?" 

"I think so. See, mother, in one place he marks 
a weak point." 

"Have you, Mr. Verney, any such plans of the 
lines at Valley Forge?" she asked gayly. 

"You had better inquire of Major Montresor," 
said the Count, not fancying the too-free talk. 

"To exchange plans would simplify matters," said 
Mrs. Markham, from whom it is to be feared the twins 
inherited their capacity for mischief. 

The Count, much the ablest of the three officers, 
looked up at her of a sudden grave. Tom, always 
on easy terms with Verney, went on eagerly asking in- 
telligent questions. 

"It is time, my son, you went to bed," said the 
mother. "If George Washington, Count, could make 
no more of that tangle of lines than I, you might 
safely make him a Christmas gift of it." 

"Let him come and get it," laughed Verney. 

"They are pretty poor with their Continental rag 



S. WEIR MITCHELL 75 

money/' growled Grimstone, "but I suppose that map 
would easily fetch — " 

"Fetch !" broke in the Count, still less relishing the 
talk. "It would n't fetch five shillings/' There was an 
unusually sharp note in his voice. 
"Roll it up, Verney." 

He was the senior officer present and Verney, at 
once recognizing the. implied rebuke as something like 
an order, took the hint, saying, as he rolled the map, 
"I wanted to ask you if you thought — " 

The Count put a hand on his shoulder with the 
slight pressure which gave force to his words as he 
said : 

"We will talk of it,- sir, another time. Permit me 
to say that if I were you I should be careful of that 
map." This was in an aside to Verney as the boy left 
them. 

Among them they had set the adventurous mind 
of a fearless young rebel to thinking in a fashion of 
which they little dreamed. 

"I shall be careful, sir/' and then with his gay 
manner and the self-confidence of youth, he added : 
"What with the Gemini and Tom and the Colonel, it 
ought to be safe enough. What time should we go 
to-morrow, Colonel ?" 

"Nine will be early enough." 

"Will you lend me your sable coat ?" asked Verney 
of the Count. 

"With pleasure." 

"I like best my sealskin," said Grimstone. "It is 
not so heavy. Do you really mean to take the boys?" 



76 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

"Of course I do. We want Tom to hold the horses 
while we tramp about, and the Gemini must have the 
frolic. I promised." 

Tom listened, well pleased. He paused on his way 
to bed, and while the officers were studying Major 
Montresor's elaborate map, he pocketed the rough 
sketch of attack Verney had crumpled up and cast 
•under the table. 

The boy was by this time more than merely 
curious. Being intelligent and thoughtful, all this war 
talk interested him, and now for two years his father's 
letters while in service and the constant discussion he 
heard had rendered familiar the movements of the two 
armies and the changing fortunes of the war. The 
great value of the map of Sir William's chief en- 
gineer had been made plain to him, and his mother's 
gay suggestion that it would be a nice Christmas gift 
to Washington set the lad to planning all manner of 
wild schemes as he lay abed. He finally gave it up in 
despair. How could a boy manage to steal a map 
from a man like Verney and then get to Valley Forge ? 
It was no use to bother about it, and he went to sleep. 

CHAPTER II. 

The boys were up early, over-joyed to see a 
brilliant, sunshiny day. Mrs. Markham provided an 
ample luncheon, and with Verney and the Colonel in 
front of the sleigh, and the twins and Tom well 
muffled up on the back seat, the party sped away, the 
snow creaking under the runners. 



S. WEIR MITCHELL 77 

The twins talked, laughed and sang, while Tom 
sat still, thinking. 

They paused again and again in Germantown and 
beyond it to inspect positions or to talk to officers. At 
Chestnut Hill they drove down the westward slope and 
finally came upon the farther picket line below the hill. 
Verney, an engineer officer, thought a field work was 
needed at this point. Accordingly, the two officers got 
out, leaving their fur overcoats in the sleigh, as the air 
was now warmer and they had to tramp some distance 
through the heavy drifts of snow, 

The Colonel put Montresor's map in the pocket 
of his fur coat, which he folded and laid in the sleigh. 
Verney also left the Count's rich sable at the feet of 
the twins. 

"We shall be gone half an hour, boys/' said 
Verney. "Had we not better call a corporal from the 
fire yonder to stand by the horses ?" 

"Lord, man,", said Grimstone, "they would stand 
till night. They are dead tired. Won't you want the 
map?" 

"No," said Verney; "I know it by heart." 

About a hundred yards distant was a great camp 
fire and just ahead of them an outlying picket of two 
soldiers, one on each side above the road. Tom sat 
on the front seat, the reins in his hand. Of a sudden 
a mad idea came into his mind. 

The map was in the sleigh. The two officers were 
far away, tramping through the drifts. Before him 
lay the lonely highway. He would take the map to 
Washington. He forgot the peril of the mad venture 



;8 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

now tempting him, or gave it but a boy's passing 
thought. His summers had been spent at a farm near 
White Marsh. He knew the country well. The temp- 
tation was too much for him. 

A man would have realized the difficulties and the 
danger for the smaller boys. He did not. A boy's 
mind is more simple. The risks for himself were 
merely additional temptations. 

He stood up, the reins in his hand, and gazed 
anxiously after the retreating forms of the two officers. 
Then he turned to his brothers. "Get over in front, 
Bill ; quick, and don't make a noise." 

There was mischief in the air as Bill at once 
knew. He climbed over the seat and waited. 

"Hold fast, Harry," said Tom. 

"These horses are going to run away." 

"Oh, let me out," cried Harry. 

"No, hold on, and keep quiet." 

"What fun," cried Bill. "We are to have a ride 
all to ourselves." 

"Do you whack the horses, Bill. They'll go. 
Wait a moment." He gave one last look around him 
and ahead. 

Beyond the picket the road ran straight for a 
mile. He had his moment of final hesitation, but it 
was soon over. No one was in sight near by, and his 
eyes roamed over the trackless vacancy of snow-clad 
spaces into which the "highway disappeared. 

"Are you ready, Bill?" he said, handing him the 
whip. 



S. WEIR MITCHELL 79 

"All right/' said Bill, seeing desirable mischief 
ahead and enjoying the prospect. 

Harry was less eager, but, ashamed to confess his 
fears, said bravely, "Well, Tom, hurry up." 

"Now," said Tom, "do you, Bill, hit the horses 
with the whip, not too hard. They'll go." 

They did go, for Bill, enchanted, had to be stopped. 
In an instant they were off and away at a mad gallop 
over a much-used road. 

"By George!" roared the Colonel. 

"The horses have run away!" 

The soldiers shouted, the picket ran down to the 
road, too late, and furious at this unwonted treatment 
the horses ran. A mile or more went by before the 
heavy snowdrifts of a less-used road lessened their 
speed. On a hill crest Tom stood up and looked back. 

"Guess we are safe, boys," he said. 

"It's good there are no horses about." 

As the sleigh moved more slowly at a trot, Bill 
said, "It was a first-class runaway!" and Harry, re- 
assured, asked if it wasn't time for lunch. 

Tom said no, and kept his eye on the road, which 
by one o'clock became hard for the horses, as the 
drifts were heavier. 

At last he pulled up for luncheon and to rest the 
team. As the twins were now pretty cold Tom got out 
the fur coats. 

"There are only two," said Harry. 

"Oh, I'll fix that." said Tom. And this was his 
way. He threw the heavy sable coat over the boys' 
shoulders, and while Harry put his right hand into the 



80 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

right sleeve Bill put his left hand into the left sleeve. 
When Tom had them buttoned up, the two red faces 
being close together in the middle, he called them a 
double-headed bear and roared with laughter as he 
himself put on the Colonel's coat. 

"Won't he say things !" said Bill, and they went on, 
but only at a walk. Harry did not like it, but, ashamed 
to confess his fears, kept quiet. 

They met no one. The distant farms were hidden 
by the snow-laden forests. The drifts became heavier. 
Now they were off the road and now on. There were 
no marks of recent travel. It was Christmas, the 
farmers at home. Both the twins had become silent, 
Tom more and more anxious as he missed his well- 
known landmarks. 

At last a dead tree on the road let him know that 
he was about six miles from the Forge. The horses 
had come quite nine miles or more through tiring drifts. 
Now and then their feet balled and Tom had to get 
down and beat out the packed snow. 

Finally the horses could do no more than walk. 
It was well on to four o'clock, but at this he could 
only guess. He began to be troubled about the twins 
and a little to regret having made his venture. If they 
came to a stop with no house in sight, what could he 
do? To walk to the camp would be even for him hard 
and for the twins impossible. 

Again he stopped the horses for a rest, a formid- 
able drift lying ahead and filling the road. 

By this time Bill had lost much of the joy of 
mischievous adventure. He began to think it was time 



S WEIR MITCHELL 81 

for them to return home and Harry had asked over and 
over how soon they would go back. Tom at length 
ceased to answer him as it drew toward evening. 

There was a new sharpness in the air. a warning 
to Tom of what night would bring. He stood upon 
the seat and searched the white-clad land for a house 
or the wood opening which might lead to one. He saw 
no sign of habitation to which he could go in person 
for help. And how could he leave his brothers ? Even 
to turn homeward in the narrow road among the drifts 
would have been, as he saw, quite out of the question. 
» What else was there but to go on? 

Even at this worst minute of his daring adventure 
the boy could have cried at the thought of failure. 
He felt the map and Yerney's sketch under his waist- 
coat, thought of his father, a prisoner, and then cheer- 
ing up the twins, used the whip on the weary horses, 
who plunged into the great mound of snow. 

A trace snapped, the sleigh turned over on its 
side, the horses kicked, broke loose and fled away down 
the road and were soon lost to view. 

Tom got on his feet and looked for the twins. 
For a moment they w T ere out of sight. Then the huge 
drift began to shake and their four legs were seen 
kicking above the snow, whence Tom pulled out the 
two-headed bear. Bill laughed. Tom did not. Harry 
looked his alarm. 

All three working hard were able to right the 
sle^eh after beating away a part of the drift. After 
that they climbed in and ate what was left of the food, 



82 HOME AUTHORS—PENNSYLVANIA 

but were not quite so merry as before, while Tom, 
made savage by failure, would neither eat nor talk. 

At last he stood up on the seat. 

"Shut up, Gemini/' he said, "I hear something. 
Now," he said, turning, "mind you if these I hear are 
British we were run away with. Hush !" He heard in 
the sharp frosty air the clink of sabres and soon the 
thud of horses' hoofs in the snow. 

CHAPTER III. 

A moment after the runaway boys had heard the 
sound of horses in the snow, a dozen troopers of the 
Continental army were around them and a young officer 
rode up, while Harry whimpered and said, "Now we'll 
be killed." 

"Great George!" cried the officer, "but here's a 
queer capture. Who the deuce are you?" 

"I am Tom Markham, sir. My father is Colonel 
Markham, and these are my brothers." 

When Allan McLane saw the two-headed bear he 
rocked with laughter as he sat in his saddle. 

"And how did you get here?" 

"We ran away with the horses of Colonel Grim- 
stone and Captain Verney, and, sir, this was why we 
ran away." As he spoke he pulled out Montresor's map 
and the sketch. 

McLane opened the paper. "By George, it's Mont- 
resor's own map. How did you get it ?" 

"They left it in the sleigh while they went to look 
at something this side of Chestnut Hill. Is it any use, 
sir?" added Tom anxiously. 

"Any use, man! If General Washington doesn't 



S. WEIR MITCHELL 83 

make you a colonel for this there is no use in man or 
boy trying to serve an ungrateful country." 

Then the twins, feeling neglected, said, "We 
helped, too." 

"I licked the horses/' cried Bill. 

"Aren't you cold, boys?" 

"Yes, sir, but we never told Tom." 

"By George, but you are a plucky lad. Take this 
two-headed animal, Sergeant. Mount one of them, 
coat and all, in front of you and be quick, or we shall 
have them frozen/'* 

"The other may have my coat," said Tom. 

"Good/' said the Captain. "You shall wear my 
own cloak, my lad." 

Seeing Harry's look of fright and the ready tears, 
he said : "It's all right, youngster. Don't you be afraid. 
We are all your friends and I know your father well." 

Turning to Tom he said : "This way, my lad. Now 
then, give him a knee, Sergeant; so, a foot in my stirrup 
and up you go behind me. Now then, right about, 
by twos, march." 

He went off at a sharp trot with Tom's arms 
around his waist. 

"Hold on to the belt," he said, 

"May I some day have a boy like you ! I enlist 
you in my troop. You are one of Allan McLane's 
rangers. Hold hard. The road is better. I am going 
to gallop." 

If ever there was a proud boy it was Tom Mark- 
ham, for who did not know Allan McLane, the terror 
of outlying picket, the. hero of a dozen gallant ad- 
ventures. 



84 HOME AUTHORS— PEXXSYLVAXIA 

"How are you, Gemini?" criew Tom, looking 
back. 

"Oh, we're fine," roared Bill, his teeth chattering 
with cold. 

At the river they were stopped a minute. McLane 
gave the pass-word, "Washington," and at dusk they 
tramped over the bridge and were at once among 
General Varney's brigades. 

Bill had ceased to ask questions. 

Harry, again uneasy at the sight of soldiers, wept 
unseen, and even Tom felt a certain awe at thus facing 
the unknown. He was more at ease as he saw hundreds 
of ill-clad men making merry in a wild snowball fight, 
shouting and laughing. 

They rode in the gloom through dimly-seen rows 
of log huts, and at one of them McLane dismounted. 

"Take your men in," he said to a Lieutenant. 
"Report at headquarters and say I shall be there in 
an hour." He lifted the twins from their perches and 
bade the three enter his hut. "This is my home, boys. 
Come in." 

It was a tiny log cabin with a stone-built chimney 
and a big fire : wood alone was to be had—in plenty. 

The twins felt better after he gave them in turn 
a teaspoonful or two of whiskey in water, laughed at 
their wry faces as they drank, set Harry on his knee, 
patted him on the back, and bade them make free of his 
stale biscuit and the potatoes he roasted in the hot 
ashes. 

The twins, as they got warm in this pleasant com- 
pany, talked of their adventures. Tom sat in silence. 

"What's the matter?" asked McLane, getting only 
"yes" and "no" to his queries. 



S. WEIR MITCHELL 85 

/ "I am thinking, sir, of my mother. Oh, but she 
will be troubled. I never thought of that when — " 

"Be easy, my lad. To-morrow I am going into the 
city. I shall see her. When you can get back I do not 
know, but you will see the camp and the troops and 
get your share of a trooper's fare. When you are warm 
I want you to come with me, Tom/' 

"Yes, sir. I am ready now." 

With a word to the twins he followed the Cap- 
tain through the darkness. 

The men were huddled around campfires and were 
cooking their scanty rations of pork and potatoes. 
Presently McLane paused at the door of a small stone 
house, the only one in the lines. A sentry walked 
to and fro before it. 

McLane went in and said to an officer: "Mr. 
Tilghman, ask the General to see me. It is important." 

In a few minutes the officer returned. "This 
way," he said. 

Tom saw seated before the fire a large man in 
buff-and-blue uniform. He rose, saying, "What news 
have you, Captain?" 

"This lad, sir, brought from the town at some peril 
this map and sketch. It seems to be some one's notion 
of an attack." 

The tall officer put the sketch aside, but as he 
considered the map he said, looking up : "This is Major 
Montresor's own map and is invaluable. What is your 
name, my boy?" 

"I am a son of Colonel Markham, sir." 

"A most gallant officer. And how, my lad, did 
you happen to get this map?" 



86 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

Tom was a little disturbed by this authoritative 
gentleman. Being a boy, he had, of course, been left 
standing, while McLane and the tall man were seated. 
He understood that he must stand until requested to 
sit, but it did add a little to a certain embarrassment, 
rare for Tom. 

"Tell your story, Tom," said McLane. 

"Well, sir, the horses ran away and the map was 
in the sleigh." Tom stopped. Action, not speech, was 
his gift, then and later. 

"It is not very clear, but the lad is tired." 

"Yes, sir," said Tom, without the least boy desire 
to describe what was a bold and dangerous adventure. 

"Never mind your story now. Captain McLane 
will tell me later. You are a brave lad, and if God had 
given me one like you I should have been glad" 

Tom felt somehow that he was well rewarded. 

"But," added the tall man, setting kind, blue eyes 
on the lad, "this will make a great stir, and you will, I 
fear, suffer for it when you reach home." 

"Yes, sir," said Tom. "And the twins?" 

"Twins? What's this, McLane?" 

"There were three in the business," said the Cap- 
tain. 

"Indeed. I wish there were as much spirit in the 
army." 

"After all, sir," said McLane, "what can they 
do to a mere boy whose horses ran away?" 

"But how are they to get to the city?" 

"I will see to that, sir, and let Mrs. Markham 
know." 



S. WEIR MITCHELL 87 

"Yes, yes, quite right. Now I must be excused. " 
He rose and shook hands with Tom, and bowed to the 
officer. 

"Come, Tom/' said McLane. 

Tom made his best bow and they went out into 
the cold December night. Then Tom asked, "Who- 
was that General ?" 

"Good gracious, my boy, I thought you knew. 
That was General Washington. He might have thanked 
you more. But that's his way." 

"I think he said enough, sir/' 

McLane looked at the young face, now elate and 
smiling and then quiet in thought. 

The Lieutenant was waiting in the hut when Tom 
and the Captain returned. 

McLane said : "I shall be away for a day or , 
more. Their mother must hear news of these lads. I 
leave them in your care, Lieutenant." 

"Yes, sir." 

The Captain said good-by and was gone for two 
days. 

Meanwhile the story was told by the troopers and 
soon repeated at the campfires, where the men amused 
themselves mightily with the twins and their narratives. 



This selection is used through the courtesy of George 
W. Jacobs Company, Philadelphia. 

HOME READING. 

A Venture in 1777. 

Mr. Kris Kringle. 

The Adventures of Francois. 

Hugh Wynne. 



LLOYD MIFFLIN 

Artist and Poet 

Of living American poets Lloyd Mifflin, of 
"Norwood/' near Columbia, ranks among the greatest. 
This region has always been his home — among the 
broad fields and sloping hills of Lancaster County, and 
in view of the tumbling waters of the Susquehanna. 
It is a fit abiding place for an artist and poet. 

Lender his father who was an able portrait painter, 
the boy received his first instructions in painting. 
Later he spent several years in Germany and Italy 
studying under private masters. His works have been 
exhibited in this country and in Europe. Some of his 
richest scenes are taken from the familiar surroundings 
of his own home. 

Failing health caused him to apply himself to 
literary studies, and what so natural that one skilled 
as a landscape painter should find himself adapted to 
another form of the fine arts ! Almost from the 
beginning he found ready acceptance from an appre- 
ciative public, particularly in England where critics 
linked his name with that of the great Wordsworth. 
In America recognition came somewhat more slowly, 
not from critics, for they praised his poems, but from 



LLOYD MIFFLIN 89 

readers. The reason for this is perhaps found in the 
form of his verse. He excels as a writer of sonnets, 
and only a student of poetry can appreciate this per- 
fection of form which has so many rigid rules for 
composition. The Leaf Drifted Aisles and Across the 
Years, found in a volume of Collected Sonnets, are 
graceful, beautiful, and musical. 

Most of his poems — he has written about twelve 
volumes — do not lend themselves to easy interpretation 
for school boys and girls; yet some are enjoyed by 
all persons. Perhaps the most appealing volume is 
The Fleeing Nymph, in which will be found, among 
others, Peace to the Brave! This poem was written 
at the request of the Witness Tree Chapter of the 
Daughters of the American Revolution on the occasion 
of the unveiling of a cenotaph, October 5, 1899, at 
Donegal Churchyard, to the memory of the Revolu- 
tionary soldiers who enlisted from Lancaster county. 
Donegal is near the home of Mr. Mifflin. 

(Born, September 15, 1846; living). 



PEACE TO THE BRAVE 



Peace to the Brave ! They do not need our praising, 
For in all hearts is treasured every name ; 

Yet for the future we to-day are raising 
A tablet to their fame. 

And while the trees put on their fading splendors 

And droop their banners like to knights of old, 

Let Freedom drop a tear for her defenders, 
Now crumbled into mould. 

They are not dead so long as recollection 

Triumphantly proclaims their dauntless part; 

But they shall live in sanctified affection 
Templed within the heart. 

If some, perchance, were of a lowly station, 

They are ennobled beyond mortal breath; 

Co-equal with the proudest of the Nation, — 
Made eminent by Death. 

O'er those who die for Fame there rests a beauty 
Dimmed by the human craving for renown ; 

But on these patriots' brows, the angel Duty, 
Enwreathed her purest crown. 



90 



LLOYD MIFFLIN 91 

Here their descendants, rapt in veneration, 

In distant days full many an hour shall stand : 

The alien, too, shall bend in adoration 
O'er these who freed a Land. 

Sometimes in Spring, with flowers as a token, 

Children of sires as yet unborn, may come, 

And place around this shaft, then still unbroken, 
Their wreaths of laurel-bloom. 

Far from this vale, the heroes, lone, are lying 

In peaceful fields now tilled by happier men; 

The patriots fell, but each dim eye in dying 
Looked to these dales again. 

Some near the Wissahickon shades are sleeping; 

On far Long Island some as bravely died ; 
And sylvan Brandywine has in her keeping 

Some whom death glorified. 

Forget not those — the warriors worn and gory — 

Who sought their homes when honored scars were 

They only lacked the great and crowning glory [healed ; 
Of dying on the field. 

Still may the Morning with her roseate finger 

Touch these engraven names with gracious light ; 

Still may the sunset round this tablet linger, — 
The stars keep watch by night. 

O shade the spot, historic oaks centennial, 

Here by the ancient Kirk of Donegal ; 

Ye evergreens, and church-yard pines perennial, 
Stand sentry round the wall ! 



92 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

O River, with your beauty time-defying, 

Flowing along our peaceful shores to-day, 

Be glad you fostered them — the heroes lying 
Deep in the silent clay ! 

Be jubilant, ye hill-tops, old and hoary, — 

Proud that their feet have trod your rocky ways ; 

Rejoice, ye vales, for they have brought you glory 
And ever-during praise ! 

We leave their memory to the hearts that love them; 

Their sacrifice shall still remembered be; 
The very cloud shall pause, in pride, above them 

Who fought to make us free ! 

With the long line that files into Death's portal 

They pass with honor blazoned on each breast; 

They camp afar, upon the Plains Immortal, 
Each in his tent of rest ! 

This poem is used by permission of Small, Maynard and 
Company, Boston. 

HOME READING. 

To the Meadow Lark. 

To the Iris. 

Return, O Spring! 

To an Old Venetian Painting (Sonnet). 



Note — These poems are found in the volume entitled 
The Fleeing Nymph, published by Small, Maynard & Com- 
pany, of Boston. 



ELIZABETH LLOYD 

Teacher, Journalist, Poet, and Short Story Writer 

Elizabeth Lloyd was born on Christmas Day, near 
the village of Dolington, Bucks County. By birth- 
right she was a Friend, descended from the Lloyds 
who came to this country with William Penn; an 
abolitionist, a believer in woman's rights, peace, and 
total abstinence from alcohol and tobacco. 

Tradition says that she learned her letters before 
she was two years old from the alphabet on the rim 
of the little tin plate from which she ate, and that 
when her mother was teaching her brother, three and 
a half years older, to spell words of three letters in 
Comly's spelling book, Elizabeth lay on the floor and 
pronounced them for him. Be that as it may, in 
some way she learned to read before she was four 
years old. 

The first book which she remembers reading was 
an illustrated paper-back version, for children, partly 
in prose and partly in rhyme, of Uncle Tom's Cabin. 
When she was six her father read the entire book 
aloud to the family in the evenings, and soon after- 
wards she read it through for herself, again and 
again. 

93 



94 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

At three years of age she knew by heart and 
recited to admiring friends Mrs. Heman's Better Land, 
Charles Mackay's Inquiry, and a poem called Good 
Morning to God. When she was seven she began 
learning by heart for the pleasure of it such poems 
as appealed to her. Among these were Longfellow's 
Psalm of Life and Whittier's Yankee Girl. 

She cared little for dolls, except to play school 
with them. When four years old she decided to be 
a teacher when she grew up, and never wavered from 
that decision. The school which she attended was very 
large, and her greatest joy was in being permitted to 
help the teacher by instructing the little ones to read 
and spell. Her favorite amusement as a child, was 
playing horse. The only joy that was greater was 
riding or driving a real horse, which she was allowed 
to do at an early age. 

When she started to school, at the age of seven, 
she was placed in the Third Reader class. Every 
Friday afternoon the pupils wrote compositions or 
"spoke pieces." 

Among her favorite authors at an early age were 
Bryant, Byron, Burns, Ruskin, Scott, Dickens, Hugo, 
Addison, and Macaulay. At Millersville Normal 
School, from which she graduated in the Scientific 
Course, she made good use of the Page Library, de- 
voting much of her time to reading. 

She was a teacher for thirty years, a great deal o 
the time in Friends' Schools. Her first writing for 



ELIZABETH LLOYD 95 

pay was to report lectures for a weekly newspaper. 
Later she wrote a series of articles signed Ruth Cray- 
dock, dealing with the problems of life with special 
stress on the bringing up of children. "Being un- 
married," she says, "I knew all about this." Since 
that time she has been regularly engaged in journalistic 
and literary work. 

Some time in the seventies the Friends' Book 
Association offered a prize of three hundred dollars 
for the best story for children embodying Friends' 
principles, and she began The Old Red School House 
with that thought in mind. After writing two or 
three chapters, something occurred, so occupying her 
time that the manuscript was put aside and forgotten. 
No story, worthy of the prize, was written within the 
prescribed limit, and the offer was not renewed. When 
teaching the Buckingham Friends' School, she chanced 
upon the chapters written long before, re-wrote them 
and added the remaining chapters, reading the story 
to her pupils as she progressed. It is enjoyed by young 
people. A little Baltimore girl recently remarked 
gravely to her aunt that of all the books she had read, 
she thought The Old Red School House had done her, 
the most good. 

Miss Lloyd has composed many poems, which 
have appeared in newspapers and magazines, but these 
have never been collected in one volume. The most 
widely known, The Song of the Twentieth Century, 
has been set to music. This lyric was praised by 
President Benjamin Harrison whose words, "Christ in 



96 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

the heart, and his love in the nation, is the only cure 
for the ills which threaten us to-day," inspired the 
composition. 

Miss Lloyd is now associate editor of the Friends' 
Intelligencer. 

(Born, December 25, 1848; living). 



FRANK'S PASSION 

During the first three weeks of school, Frank 
Sherwood behaved himself so well in every respect 
that Miss Hammond decided she need not apprehend 
any trouble in that direction ; but when she expressed 
this opinion to her Uncle John, he only said as before: 
"Wait and see; you don't know Frank Sherwood yet. 
He's on his good behavior now, but he'll get mad some 
of these days, and then look out!" 

Miss Hammond reasoned that if she always 
treated him well, he would have no cause to be angry 
with her, and so there would be no difficulty, but still 
her uncle shook his head, and said: "Wait and see!" 
And before the fourth week had ended, she was 
obliged to admit that Uncle John was right. 

One morning Frank got up in a bad humor ; as a 
consequence of this several things went wrong at home, 
and by the time he reached school he was feeling far 
from amiable; then to make the matter worse, he got 
into a dispute with Harry Harper over a game of 
ball, so that by the time school called he wore a very 
cloudy face indeed. 

According to the program his class had spelling 
for the first lesson in the morning, and spelling was 

97 



98 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

harder for Frank than any of his other studies; not 
that he was a very poor speller, but he did not excel 
in that, as he did in mathematics and some other 
branches. But Harry Harper, who was poor in the 
other lessons, was a natural speller, and was usually 
at the head of the class. 

A few days before the morning referred to, Frank 
had got above Harry, and was working hard to keep 
his place, while Harry was making just as great efforts 
to get him down again. The spelling-class was called, 
as usual, and the lesson proceeded smoothly enough 
until the last time around, when the word "separate" 
was given to Frank. Without the slightest hesitation 
he said, "s-e-p-e-r-a-t-e, separate," but almost before 
he had time to pronounce it Harry said, "s-e-p-a-r-a-t-e, 
separate," and started to go above him. 

"No you don't, either," said Frank, angrily; "that's 
just the way I spelled it." 

"You said V instead of V," said Miss Hammond, 
quietly. 

"I didn't either; I said 'a'/' replied Frank now in 
a white heat of passion. 

"Frank, you are forgetting yourself/' replied his 
teacher, firmly; "move down and let Harry go above 
you." 

Frank said nothing more, but he did not move an 
inch; however, as there was plenty of room, Harry 
stepped back and went above him, and then a few 
more words were given out, and the class was dis- 
missed. 

The next duty of the morning was to prepare the 



ELIZABETH LLOYD 99 

arithmetic lesson, but Frank seemed determined not 
to do anything right if he could possibly avoid it. 
The day before, he had brought a book to school in 
which he was very much interested, and after pre- 
paring his lessons, had taken it out to finish reading it ; 
but when Miss Hammond told him she preferred he 
would not read anything of the kind in school, he had 
promptly put it away. 

He had forgotten to take it home with him, and 
when he went to his seat from his spelling-class, in- 
stead of going to work at his arithmetic, he took out 
the forbidden book and began to read. His teacher 
saw what he was doing, but thought it best not to 
take any immediate notice of his disobedience. 

When the arithmetic class was called up to recite, 
she purposely gave Frank the hardest example in the 
lesson. He could have worked the question easily 
enough if he had been as clear-headed as usual, but 
there was one point in it which required close thought, 
and that he was not in a condition to give; so when 
all the rest of the class had done their examples and 
explained them, he was still working away at the 
blackboard, and getting more and more out of humor 
every moment. 

When Miss Hammond asked how many of the 
class had worked all the questions at their seats, all 
hands were raised but Frank's. 

"How many of them did you work, Frank ?" 

"Not any of them." 

"Why not?" 

"Because I didn't feel like it." 



ioo HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

Miss Hammond began to think that there was 
some truth in Uncle John's remark that it was easier 
to talk about obedience than to secure it, but if she 
had any doubt as to the result of this contest she 
did not show it either in face or voice. Before Frank 
had the slightest suspicion of what she was going to 
do, she walked over to his seat, took the book he had 
been reading, and put it in her own desk; then she 
said in the quietest voice possible: 

"Frank, you must work all the examples in this 
arithmetic lesson before you can come to any other 
recitations ;" then she dismissed the class. 

After Frank resumed his seat he did not offer to 
touch his arithmetic, but sat for a long time in moody 
silence, and tried to convince himself that he had been 
very badly used indeed. At length he grew so tired 
of doing nothing that he took out his reader, and 
made believe to be very much interested in reading 
pieces that he already knew almost by heart. At noon 
he took his accustomed place on the playground as 
though nothing had happened ; and when school called 
again, he busied himself with his geography and 
grammar. But in spite of all his efforts time hung 
heavily on his hands, and he found it very dull work 
to be obliged to remain in his seat all the time, while 
the others went to class. 

He began to wonder whether he had spelled that 
word incorrectly in the morning ; he certainly meant to 
say a but then he might have said e ; and at any rate, 
he knew he had done wrong to speak as he did, and 
he knew he had been doing wrong ever since. If 



ELIZABETH LLOYD 101 

Miss Hammond had only been angry with him he 
could have borne it better, for then he would have had 
no thought of yielding; but she looked so very sorry 
that at length he began to be ashamed of himself, and 
finally he concluded to do the sums and make no 
more fuss about it. 

When he took out his slate and book Miss Ham- 
mond felt more relieved than she would have been 
willing to admit, but the end was not yet, as she soon 
found. There was no difficulty until Frank came to 
the example he had failed to solve in the morning, 
and that would not come right, let him try as he 
would. He knew his teacher would help him if he 
asked her, but he was too proud to do that, so after 
trying several ways of working the problem, and 
failing in all, his ill-humor returned, and in a fit of 
passion he threw the book half-way across the room. 

As soon as he had done this he involuntarily 
looked at Miss Hammond, and her eyes met his and 
held them; she did not utter a word, but merely 
motioned with her hand for him to pick up his book, 
and he obeyed almost before he knew it. As soon as 
he had taken up the book he was provoked at himself 
for having done so ; he could not understand the 
magnetic power that had constrained him to obey 
against his will; but he did not dare to throw the 
book down again, and so sat and fumed for the rest 
of the afternoon, inwardly resolving that the next time 
Miss Hammond ordered him to do anything he'd show 
her that he was not so easily conquered. 



102 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

When the time for dismissing came Miss Ham- 
mond asked : 

"Frank, how many of those questions have you 
done?" 

"All but one." 

"Why haven't you done that, too?" 

"Because I can't." 

"Some of the others in the class worked it with- 
out assistance, and if they could do it you can. I wish 
you to master it before you go home." 

Frank said nothing, but when school was dis- 
missed he started to go out with the others. Miss 
Hammond called to him, "Frank, if you go home 
without doing that question, you need not come back." 

He went out as though he had not heard her, but 
instead of going home, he turned the other way with 
Ned Mathews, as he very often did. 

He put his arm around Ned's neck, as he had 
the habit of doing (for he was a little the taller) and 
the two walked up the road together, talking on all 
imaginable subjects except the one that was uppermost 
in both their minds. 

When they reached Mathews' gate, Frank said, 
''Good night, old boy," and turned to go, but Ned held 
him a moment, and said with an effort, 

"I say, Frank, if Miss Hammond is at the school- 
house when you go back, you'd better go in and do that 
question. We can't get along at school without you, 
old fellow." Frank made no reply, but he choked 
down a lump in his throat and started back. 

For the first time that day he was alone, and as 



ELIZABETH LLOYD 103 

he walked slowly back, with the fresh breeze cooling 
his brow, his thoughts were very busy. Ned's words 
had touched him in a tender place, for his school 
was very dear to him, and he could not bear to think 
of leaving it ; and notwithstanding his boast to 'Squire 
Hammond that there were plenty of schools in 
America, he knew his father would be deeply mortified 
if he were expelled from Hillside. Then he remem- 
bered all his good resolutions, and wondered what 
Miss Hammond thought of him now; he began to 
realize how foolish he had been, and to wish himself 
back in the school-room. 

When he came in sight of the house he saw that 
it was still open, and he walked more slowly, wishing 
to go in and yet not quite willing to yield, lacking 
courage to acknowledge himself in the wrong. 

While he was still undecided what to do, the 
words of the verse that he had read the morning he 
was teacher came to him again, and he said to himself, 
" 'He that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh 
a city,' — I understand what that means now, for I'd 
rather march up to the cannon's mouth than into that 
school-house door. But I'll do it, if it is hard work; 
I'm not going to own myself a coward." And as he 
made this resolution he quickened his step and walked 
bravely into the school-room. 

When Frank had gone out without heeding her 
words, Miss Hammond had felt more disappointed 
than she was willing to admit to herself ; but as soon 
as she saw him turn the other way with Ned, the hope 
sprang up within her that he would come back in a 



104 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

better frame of mind; so she busied herself with some 
writing and awaited his return. When she saw him 
come back so slowly, her hopes grew " stronger, and 
when he walked into the room her heart uttered a fer- 
vent thanksgiving ; for she loved this wayward boy, and 
her faith was strong that he would yet develop into a 
noble man. 

Not a word was spoken by either, but when Frank 
saw the glad look in his teacher's eyes, he felt well re- 
paid for the struggle it had cost him to come back. 
He went directly to his seat and attacked the trouble- 
some problem with a will that was not to be daunted 
this time, and in a few minutes he had mastered the 
difficult point and obtained the result ; then he went to 
Miss Hammond and handed her his slate, still without 
saying a word. 

She glanced at it, and said with a smile, "I knew 
you could do it if you wanted to." 

Frank colored and looked down, but although he 
would have liked to say a great deal the words would 
not come. Miss Hammond perceived how he felt, and 
putting down the slate she asked quietly, "Frank, will 
you tell me why you came back?" 

This gave Frank the opportunity he was waiting 
for, and yet it was not easy to make use of it; but he 
never did things by halves, and so he answered bravely : 

"I came back partly because I thought you would 
like to know that I was ashamed of myself; I don't 
think I spelled that word wrong this morning, but 
I oughtn't to have said what I did." 



ELIZABETH LLOYD 105 

''Thank you, Frank; you have gained a great 
victory, and I congratulate you." 

Again there was a silence, broken at length by 
the inquiry, "You said 'partly' ; what was your other 
reason?" 

It was a hard question to answer; he almost 
wished she had not asked it; that lump came in his 
throat again, and he dared not trust himself to speak, 
but he picked up the little Bible that was lying on her 
desk, and after some search he found the 16th chapter 
of Proverbs and handed it to her with his finger on 
the 32d verse. She read it and then looked up with 
pleasant surprise ; she had expected any answer rather 
than this. 

"I am very glad, Frank; that is one of my favorite 
verses, and I was going to give it to you for a help; 
I did not know you knew it already." 

"But it's such hard work, Miss Hammond; I've 
been trying for more than a month, and I thought I 
was all right, but to-day I've been worse than ever." 

"You have just been studying the history of the 
Revolution; was Washington always victorious?" 

"No; he was defeated over and over again." 

"And did he give up because of this?" 

"No, indeed ; he kept on fighting until the British 
got tired trying to whip him; they said the Yankees 
didn't know when they were beaten!" 

"Then I want you to be a true Yankee, and not 
give up in despair because you have failed once." 

Frank looked very thoughtful for a few moments 
and then he said, "But it isn't quite the same thing, 



io6 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

Miss Hammond. If I have anything to do, I'll work at 
it as long and try again as often as anybody; but when 
something happens that I don't like, I get mad before 
I know it, and don't think about ruling my spirit until 
it is too late." 

"A great deal better late than not at all. Shall I 
tell you two things that I think will help you not to 
get angry so easily?" 

Frank looked his assent, and she continued. "In 
the first place, whenever you get in a passion, and 
say and do things that hurt or ofifend others, make it 
a rule to apologize for it afterward, just as you have 
done this time; now that you have owned yourself in 
the wrong you will not be so apt to speak angrily to 
me again. Every time that you conquer your passion 
you will grow stronger, until at last you can hold your 
temper, just as a good horseman controls a spirited 
steed. But there is only one sure way to succeed in 
ruling your spirit; whenever you get into a passion, 
ask God to forgive you, and to give you strength to 
resist the next temptation. We cannot hope to suc- 
ceed in the battle of life without God's help." 

Frank's eyes fell again, and after a little while 
he asked, "May I go now?" 

"Not yet ; there is one more point to be considered. 
If you come into school to-morrow morning, how will 
the other pupils know that I have not broken my word 
about your not coming back? Will you tell them 
how it was, or shall I?" 

This was just the point that Frank had hoped 
would be left unsettled, for the hardest part of the 



ELIZABETH LLOYD 107 

coming back was the thought of the taunts he would 
have to bear because he had backed down ; but he 
knew it was only just to Miss Hammond that the exact 
truth should be known, so he said at once : 

"I'd rather do it, if you please; I will tell them 
bQfore school calls. " 

"Then I will not keep you any longer. Continue 
as you have begun and you will learn self-control; 
don't be discouraged if you fail sometimes, but try 
again, and with God's help you will be successful in the 
end." 

Frank bade her good-night and walked home with 
a very thoughtful face ; he resolved to work harder 
than ever to gain Miss Hammond's good opinion; but 
he did not ask God to forgive him for his passion. 
He had yet to learn that the strongest of us are weak 
without His hand to help us over the hard places 
in life's road. 

— The Old Red School House. 

Used by permission of The Biddle Press, Philadelphia. 



SONG OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 

'"Christ in the heart and his love in the nation !" 

Stronger are these than the gun or the sword ; 
Dawns the new day of our country's salvation, 

Cleansed from her sins by the might of the Lord. 

Christ in the human heart, 

Teach us the better part, 
Save us from treachery, battle, and greed ; 

Love be the nation's word, 

By every people heard, 
Love for humanity in its great need. 

Angels of Bethlehem, sound your glad chorus, 
Thrilling our souls by its message divine; 
Warfare and carnage no more shall rule o'er us, 
Brightly the star of our Saviour shall shine. 

Star of the Prince of Peace, 

Bring to us swift release, 
Let not our brothers their brothers destroy; 

Lead us to truly pray, 

Show us the higher way, 
Teach us that living for others is joy. 



1 08 



ELIZABETH LLOYD 109 

Flag of our fathers, float on in thy glory! 

Always thy red stand for justice and law, 
Ever thy white tell the sweet gospel story, 
Never thy blue in its truth show a flaw, 

And every lustrous star 

Shine from thy folds afar, 
Over a people united and free, 

Guarding this flag above, 

Keep us, O God of Love, 
Loyal to country, to manhood, and Thee. 

HOME READING. 

The Old Red School House. 



THOMAS ALLIBONE JANVIER 

Essayist, Writer of Adventures and Short Stories 

Thomas A. Janvier was born in Philadelphia, and 
received an elementary education in the public schools 
of that city. He never went to college, but like many 
men and women who were deprived of opportunities 
for higher schooling he obtained his advanced learning 
in the greatest of all schools — the school which presents 
the problems of human living. 

At an early age he obtained employment on a daily 
newspaper, and soon thereafter became an editorial 
writer for The Press. During the next few years, 
through connection with several other journals in the 
city, he acquired knowledge and training of prime 
value. This was followed by a prolonged period of 
travel, not as a swiftly-flying tourist, but as a resident. 
For the greater portion of six years he was intimately 
associated with Spanish life in America — in Mexico 
and New Mexico. Here he absorbed traditions and 
other material which he wrought into interesting ad- 
ventures for The Aztec Treasure House, Stories of 
Old New Spain and Legends of the City of Mexico. 
A European journey brought forth An Embassy to 

no 



THOMAS ALLIBOXE JANVIER in 

Provence. Historical sketches entitled In Old New 
York, written about twenty years ago, are still popular. 

Mr. Janvier now claims New York City as his 
residence, although most of his time is spent abroad. 

An older sister, Margaret Thomson Janvier, born 
in New Orleans, lives in Philadelphia. Under the 
name of Margaret Vandegrift she has written many 
pleasing juvenile stories and verses, including Under 
the Dog-Star and Umbrellas to Mend. 

(Born, July 16, 1849; living). 



THE VENGEANCE OF THE GODS 

Almost in the moment that we thus found our- 
selves in condition to show fight again, the need for 
fighting seemed like to be forced upon us; for as we 
turned to leave the treasure-chamber we were startled 
by hearing a creaking sound that we knew came from 
the sliding upward of the grating in its metal grooves 
wherewith the entrance to our prison was made fast. 

We paused for a moment, and then Young mo- 
tioned to me to follow him, stepping lightly; and as 
we came out into the oratory we heard a fresh creak- 
ing, by which we knew that the grating had been 
closed. 

"I guess it's only th' fellow puttin' in th' grub," 
Young whispered. "But go easy, Professor, an' have 
your guns all handy, so's you can shoot. If anybody 
has come in it won't do t' let 'em get out again. Only 
mind you don't shoot unless you really have to. If 
there's only two or three of 'em we'd better try t' 
club 'em with our Winchesters, so's not t' bring all 
hands down on us with a rush before we can get 
Rayburn away." 

As he spoke, we were assured that some one had 
entered when the grating was raised and had remained 
on our side of the grating when it was closed again, 

112 



THOMAS ALLIBOXE JANVIER J13 

for we heard footsteps in the room where we ordinarily 
lay ; and then the footsteps drew nearer, as though 
the unseen person were examining the other rooms in 
search of us, and we knew that in another moment 
or two this person would enter the chamber wherein 
we were. Rayburn was lying so quietly that it seemed 
as though he had fallen into a swoon again ; and Pablo, 
as we could tell by hearing his sobs, had betaken him- 
self to the room in which El Sabio was tethered, in 
search of solacing companionship. Young motioned 
me to stand on one side of the entrance to the oratory, 
and himself stood on the other; and thus we waited, 
while the footsteps rapidly drew nearer, in readiness 
most effectually to cut off the retreat of whoever might 
enter the room. 

The man who did enter, passing between us, was 
the Priest Captain. As he saw the wreck of the idol, 
and the opening in the wall behind where the idol had 
stood, he uttered an exclamation of alarm and rage; 
and in the same moment some instinctive dread of the 
danger thar menaced him caused him to turn suddenly 
around. So, for an instant, he confronted us — and 
never shall I forget the look of malignant hatred that 
was in his face as in that instant he regarded us, nor 
his quick despairing gesture at the sight of Young 
standing there with his rifle raised. Even as he opened 
his mouth to cry out, before any sound came from his 
lips, the heavy barrel of Young's rifle swept downward, 
and with a groan he fell. 

Had the blow struck fairly it could not but have 
split the man's skull open ; but he swerved aside a 



ii4 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

little as the rifle came down, and the weight of the 
stroke, glancing from his head, fell upon his shoulder. 
In an instant, dropping his rifle, Young was kneeling 
on his breast with a hand buried in the flabby flesh of 
his old throat, holding tight-gripped his windpipe. 
Excepting only Rayburn, Young was the strongest 
man I ever knew (though, to be sure, at that time he 
was weakened by his then recent wound and by the 
privations of his imprisonment), yet it was all that he 
could do to hold that old man down and to maintain his 
choking grasp. With a most desperate energy and a 
fierce strength that seemed out of all nature in a 
creature so lean and old and shrivelled, the Priest 
Captain writhed and struggled in his efforts to throw 
Young off, and sought also to grasp Young's throat 
with his long bony hands — while foam gathered on his 
thin lips, and his withered brown face grew black 
with congested blood, and his black eyes protruded 
until the half of the eyeballs, bloody with bursting 
veins, showed around the black, dilated pupils. And 
then his struggles slowly grew less and less violent, his 
knotted muscles gradually relaxed, his mouth fell open 
so that his tongue lolled out hideously, his legs and 
arms twitched a little spasmodically — and then he lay 
quite still. For a minute or two longer Young main- 
tained his grasp. Then rising to his feet, breathing 
heavily, he wiped the sweat from his face as he ex- 
claimed, at the same moment giving the dead body' a 
vicious kick: "You black devil, take that! Now I've 
squared accounts with you for killin' tlV Padre — and 
it's the best day's work I've ever done!" 



THOMAS ALLIBOXE JAXVIER 115 

Though the struggle between the two had been a 
very desperate one, there had been no noise about it. 
Through the whole fight Rayburn had remained 
buried in his death-like stupor; and Pablo, though so 
near to us, had heard no sound of it at all. 

"Now, then, Professor," Young said, when he had 
got his wind back, "we've got t' bounce. Th' first 
thing t' do is t' fasten that gratin' on our side, so's 
nobody can get in here t' bother us while we're doin' 
our skippin'. I guess we can sort o' wedge it fast 
so's t' stand 'em off for an hour or two, anyways, an' 
that's time enough to give us a fair start." 

"We can do something better than that, I think," 
I said, as we went together towards the grating. 
"Unless I am much mistaken, only the Priest Captain 
knew about this sliding door and the treasure-chamber 
beyond it. If we can restore to their places those 
three plates and can close the door behind us, I am 
persuaded that so far as pursuit of us is concerned 
we shall be absolutely safe." 

"Gosh!" Young exclaimed. "D' you know, Pro- 
fessor, I wouldn't 'a' given you credit for havin' that 
much common-sense. It's a big idea, that is, an' 
we'll try it on. But, all th' same, we've got t' 
make things as sure as we can, an' this little job must 
be attended to first." 

As we approached the grating we saw two of 
the temple guard standing outside of it, apparently 
waiting for the Priest -Captain's return; and these 
men looked at us with such evident suspicion that I 
feared for the success of our plans. "Talk to 'em," 



n6 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

said Young, hurriedly. "Talk to 'em about th' last 
election, or chicken-coops, or anything you please, 
while I take a look 'round an' see how we're goin' t' 
get this job done." 

Young dropped behind me, and then aside and so 
out of sight, as I advanced to the grating and spoke 
to the men, whose faces somewhat cleared as I told 
them that the Priest Captain desireti that they should 
wait there a little longer. And then I managed to 
hold their interest for some minutes while I spoke 
about the devil that was in El Sabio, and about other 
devils of a like sort whom I had known in my time. 
While I thus spoke I heard a little tinkling sound, as 
of metal striking against stone — but if the soldiers also 
heard they paid no attention to it — and then Young 
whispered, "We're solid now; come on!" Whereupon 
I quickly ended my imaginative discourse upon de- 
moniac donkeys, and with no appearance of haste we 
walked away. 

"It was just as easy as rollin' off a log," Young 
said, jubilantly. "There was a big gold peg stickin' 
there all ready t' slide into a slot, so's t' hold th' gratin' 
down, an' all I had t' do was t' slide it. I guess, with 
a plug like that holdin' that gratin' fast, they'll need 
jacks t' open it. Th' only other way t' start it '11 be 
rammin' it with a bit o' timber; but bustin' it in that 
way '11 take a lot o' time, an' half an hour's plenty for 
all we've got t' do. If you're straight in thinkin' no- 
body knows about that slidm' door we're solid." 

I felt very sure in my own mind that I was right 
in believing that only the Priest Captain had known 



THOMAS ALLIBOXK JANVIER 117 

of this secret opening; for, after him, the most likely 
person to have knowledge of it was the keeper of the 
archives, and that he was altogether ignorant of it I 
was well assured. Therefore I most cheerfully helped 
Young, so far as my unskilful hands could be useful, 
in the work of restoring the gold plates to the places 
whence the lightning had wrenched them loose ; and 
when this work was done, so cleverly did Young 
manage it, there was no possibility of distinguishing 
the door from any other portion of the wall ; nor was 
there then a sign of any sort remaining to show that 
by the passage of a thunder-bolt the idol had been 
destroyed.' 

As we were finishing this piece of work we heard 
the soldiers at the grating calling to the Priest Cap- 
tain — at first in low tones, and then more loudly; and 
then we heard them give a yell together, which con- 
vinced us that they had tried to raise the grating and 
had fonnd that it was fastened down. 

The ten minutes that followed was the most 
exciting time that ever I passed through. Notwith- 
standing the secure fashion in which the grating was 
fastened, we could not but dread that those outside had 
knowledge of some means whereby it could be 
loosened; and in any event there was no doubt but 
that they could force a way in upon us by beating it 
down. Therefore we knew that there was no safety 
for us until we were fairly out of the oratory, and had 
closed behind us the sliding door — and with such 
difficult material to deal with as Rayburn, who still 
lay in a heavy stupor, and Pablo, whom sorrow had 



n8 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

wellnigh crazed, we found it hard to make such haste 
as the sharp exigency of our situation required. Pablo, 
indeed was so lost in wonder at rinding the broken idol 
and the dead body of the Priest Captain, and a door 
open in the solid wall, that what little remained of 
liis wits disappeared entirely; so that we had almost 
to carry him — while El Sabio most intelligently fol- 
lowed him — into the treasure chamber, and there we 
left the two together while we returned for Rayburn. 
And as we lifted the stretcher our hearts bounded, for 
at that instant there was a tremendous crash at the 
grating; whereby we knew that those without had 
brought to bear against it some sort of a battering-ram - 
that they might beat it in. 

"It's a close call/' Young said between his teeth; 
and added, as we rested the stretcher inside the pas- 
sage while we closed behind us the sliding door: "If 
you're off your base, Professor, an' they do know th' 
trick o' this thing, it may be all day with us yet — but 
it's a comfort t' know that even if they do finish us 
we'll everlastin'ly salt 'em first with our guns." 

We heard another great crash behind us, but 
faintly now that the sliding door was closed, as we 
went onward into the treasury-chamber; and here we 
heard the like sound again, more clearly, through the 
slits cut in the wall. As gently as our haste, and the 
awkwardness of that narrow r way would permit, we 
lifted Rayburn from the stretcher, and so carried him 
down the short flight of stairs beneath the upraised 
statue of the little chamber that there was hollowed in 
the rock. Here we laid him upon the stretcher again ; 



THOMAS ALLIBOXE JANVIER 119 

and then, without any ceremony whatever, we bundled 
Pablo and El Sabio down the hole. It was a smaller 
aperture, even, than that through which we had come 
forth from the Cave of the Dead, and how El Pablo 
was able to condense himself sufficiently to get through 
it will remain a puzzle to me to my dying day. 

All this while we could hear plainly, through the 
slits in the wall, the crashing blows w T hich every minute 
or so were delivered against the grating ; together with 
a shrill roar of shouts and yells ; and we knew that 
before this vigorous assault the grating must give way 
within a very brief period, and so let in the whole 
yelping pack. If I were right in my belief that the 
Priest Captain alone knew of the secret outlet to the 
oratory, we still would be safe enough, and could make 
a preliminary examination of the cave before we 
closed the way behind us irrevocably by letting the 
statue fall back into its place; but if I were mistaken r 
then there was nothing for us but to take a chance of 
life and death by going on blindly into that black 
cavern, after wedging fast the under side of the statue 
in such a way that it no longer could be swung open- 
from above. 

It was most necessary, therefore, that we should 
see what course our enemies would take when they 
came into the oratory and found it empty of us, and 
the idol broken, and the Priest Captain lying dead 
there; and, that we might compass this end, Young- 
and I returned into the treasure-chamber and mounted 
upon a ledge that seemed to have been provided for a 
standing place — whence we had a clear view into the- 



120 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

oratory through the slits in the wall. And at the very 
moment that we thus stationed ourselves, there re- 
verberated through those rock-hewn chambers a 
deafening crash and a jingling clang of metal and a 
rattle of falling stone; and with this came a yell of 
triumph and a rush of footsteps — and then, in an 
instant, the oratory was full of soldiers and priests, 
all yelling together like so many fiends. 

But upon this violent hubbub there fell a hush 
of awe and wonder as those who had thus tumultuously 
entered the oratory saw the Priest Captain lying dead 
amid the fragments of the shattered idol, and per- 
ceived that the prisoners who had been shut within 
these seemingly solid walls had vanished utterly away ; 
and then a sobbing murmur, that presently swelled into 
moans and cries of terror, arose from the throng; and 
in a moment more, seized by a common impulse, the 
whole company bowed downward, in suppliant dread 
of the eods by whom such direful wonders had been 
wrought. 

Young gave a long sigh of relief, and with a 
most mouth-filling oath whispered in my ear, 'They 
haven't tumbled to it, an' we're all right !" 

As we gazed at these terror-stricken creatures, a 
thought occurred to me on which I promptly acted. 
'"Get both of your revolvers pointed through that hole, ,, 
I whispered to Young. "Point high, so that the balls 
will not hit anybody ; and when I begin to shoot do you 
shoot also, and as quickly as you can. Mind, you are 
not to hit anybody," I added; for I saw by the look 
on Young's face that he longed to fire into the crowd 
point-blank. For answer he gave me a rather sulky 



THOMAS ALLIBOXE JANVIER 121 

nod of assent; but I saw by the way that he held his 
pistols that my order was obeyed. "Now," I said, 
"Fire!" — and as rapidly as self-acting revolvers would 
do it, we poured twenty-four shots through the slits 
in the wall. No doubt several people were hurt by 
balls bounding back from the rock, but I am confident 
that nobody was killed. 

When we ceased firing it was impossible to see 
anything in the oratory, because of the dense cloud 
of sulphurous smoke wherewith it was filled ; but such 
shrieks and yells of soul-racking terror as come from 
beneath that black canopy I hope I may never hear 
again. I waited a little, until this wild outburst had 
somewhat quieted, and then — placing my mouth close 
to one of the openings and speaking in a voice that I 
tried to make like that of Fray Antonio — I said, in 
deep and solemn tones, "Behold the vengeance of the 
strangers' God!" 

What effect my words produced I cannot tell. 
Our firing must have loosened a fragment of rock 
between the gold plating that lined the oratory and the 
outer surface of the wall, and even as I spoke this 
fragment fell. With its fall the opening was irre- 
vocably closed. 

"That was a boss dodge," said Young, as Jie re- 
charged his revolver. "Those fellows '11 just think 
hell's broke loose in here, for sure ; and I guess after 
they're onct fairly got outside they'll rather be skinned 
alive than come back again. But what did you say to 
'em ? Hearin' you talkin' like th' Padre, that way, gave 
me a regular jolt. Don't you think, though, maybe 
it was a bit risky t' give ourselves away?" 



122 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

But when I had spoken, Young very seriously 
shook hands with me. "Shake !" he said. "I've done 
you injustice, Professor. Sometimes I've thought that 
you was too much asleep for your own good — but if 
anybody ever did anything more wide awake than that, 
I'd like t' know what he did and who he was. Why, 
when those fellows tell all that's been goin' on in 
here — about their busted idol, an' their dead Priest 
Captain, an' our skippin', an' this row our shootin' has 
made, an' then about th' Padre's ghost talkin' to 'em 
that way — it's bound t' give 'em such a jolt that th' 
whole outfit '11 slew smack round an' be Christians 
right off!" 

Some such notion as this had been in my own 
mind as I executed the plan that on the spur of the 
moment, I had formed. When later, I thought about 
it more calmly, I could not but regret, for Fray An- 
tonio's sake, my hasty action ; for he would have been 
the very last man to approve of such stringent methods 
of advancing the Christian faith. If any result came 
from my demonstration, it certainly came through ter- 
ror; and the essence of Fray Antonio's doctrine, as 
it was also of his own nature, was gentleness and love. 

— The Aztec Treasure-House. 

By permission of Harper and Brothers. Copyright, 
1890, by Harper and Brothers. 

HOME READING. 

The Aztec Treasure-House. 

Legends of the City of Mexico. 

In Old New York. 

The Uncle of an Angel and Other Stories. 



HENRY VAN DYKE 
Minister, Professor, Poet, Essayist, Short Story 

Writer 

One of the most widely read and appreciated 
authors of the present day is Dr. Henry van Dyke, 
who is lecturer on English Literature at Princeton 
University. He was born in Germantown, but re- 
members nothing of his childhood days in Pennsyl- 
vania, for his father, a Presbyterian minister, early 
moved to Brooklyn. Many a day, however, since he 
has been an active man in professional life, has he 
come back to the streams, the forests, and the moun- 
tains of his native state to seek rest and health. 

As a young man he was a student at- Princeton 
and at the University of Berlin. He became a preacher, 
and has filled some of the most prominent pulpits in 
America, with the demand for his services ever in- 
creasing. At Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, and the 
University of Paris he has left pleasant and profitably 
memories as a lecturer. He has traveled extensively, 
particularly in the Holy Land and amid the wilds of 
Canada. 

Dr. van Dyke has distinct recollections of the 

123 



124 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

first money that he earned, as have most successful 
men. Like other boys he earned small payments for 
such chores as cleaning snow from the sidewalk. Once 
his father gave him five dollars for saying the Shorter 
Catechism through at one lesson ; but these and college 
prizes he does not count. The largest dollars he ever 
saw — the first that he really earned — came as pay- 
ment for a newspaper article which he had written. 

All out-of-door life has an irresistible appeal for 
him. He angles, skates, canoes, swims, sails, rides 
horses, climbs mountains, and plays tennis. Often he 
is alone in his rambles, but most frequently he is ac- 
companied by some one of his family. Of dogs and 
horses, he is very fond; of birds (not in cages), ex- 
travagantly ; of cats, not so much that one would notice 
it, for he says one never can tell what a cat is thinking, 
except when she is after food. 

His poems, essays and stories were not intended 
primarily for children, yet thousands have read and 
enjoyed them. His own children follow with delight 
his articles as they appear in magazines. He has told 
hundreds of stories, such as "The Little Girl in the 
Weir' and "Tommy Lizard and Frankie Frog," to his 
family, but he has never written them down. Perhaps 
some time he will find leisure. Twice has he offered 
his resignation as professor at Princeton to devote his 
entire life to literature, but his students have induced 
him to reconsider his intentions. 

Among his best known shorter prose writings are 
The Other Wise Man and The First Christmas Tree, 
both of which grew out of sermons delivered in Brick 



HENRY VAX DYKE 125 

Presbyterian Church of New York. The Other Wise 
Man is the beautiful story of the rewarded search 
for the Child that was born in the manger. 

Those who would know more of Dr. van Dyke's 
love of Nature should read Little Rivers, Fisherman's 
Luck, and Days Off, charming essays of life in the 
woods and along the streams. 

He has published much poetry, of which young 
people will prefer Who Follow the Flag, The Song 
Sparrow, Birds in the Morning, and the Whip-Poor- 
Will 

(Born, November 10, 1852; living). 



BIRDS IN THE MORNING 

This is the carol the Robin throws 
Over the edge of the valley; 

Listen how boldly it flows, 
Sally on sally: 

Tirra-lirra, 
Down the river, 
Laughing water 
All a-quiver, 
Day is near, 
Clear, clear. 
Fish are breaking, 
Time for waking. 
Tup, tup, tup! 
Do you hear? 
All clear — 
Wake up ! 

This is the ballad the Bluebird sings, 

Unto his mate replying, 
Shaking the tune from his wings 

While he is flying: 



126 



HENRY VAN DYKE 127 

Surely, surely, surely, 

Life is dear 

Even here. 

Blue above, 

You to love, 
Purely, purely, purely. 

This is the song the Brown Thrush flings 

Out of his thicket of roses; 
Hark how it warbles and rings, 

Mark how it closes : 

Luck, luck, 
What luck? 
Good enough for me ! 
I'm alive, you see. 
Sun shining, 
No repining; 
Never borrow 
Idle sorrow; 
Drop it! 
Cover it up! 
Hold your cup! 
Joy will fill it, 
Don't spill it, 
Steady, be ready, 
Good luck! 

From Poems of Henry van Dyke, copyright, 191 1, by- 
Charles Scribner's Sons. 



THE WHIP-POOR-WILL 

Do you remember, father — 
It seems so long ago — 

The day we fished together 
Along the Pocono? 

At dusk I waited for you, 
Beside the lumber-mill, 

And there I heard a hidden bird 

That chanted, "whip-poor-will !" 
"Whippoorwill ! whippoorwill !" 
Sad and shrill — "whippoorwill !" 

The place was all deserted; 

The mill-wheel hung at rest; 

The lonely star of evening 

Was quivering in the west; 

The veil of night was falling; 
The w T inds were folded still; 

And everywhere the trembling air 
Re-echoed "whip-poor-will !" 
"Whippoorwill ! whippoorwill V 9 
Sad and shrill — "whippoorwill !" 

You seemed so long in coming, 
I felt so much alone; 



128 



HENRY VAN DYKE 129 

The wide, dark world was round me, 

And life was all unknown; 
The hand of sorrow touched me, 

And made my senses thrill 
With all the pain that haunts the strain 

Of mournful whip-poor-will. 

"Whippoorwill ! whippoorwill !" 

Sad and shrill — "whippoorwill !" 

What did I know of trouble? 
An idle little lad ; 

I had not learned the lessons 

That make men wise and sad. 

I dreamed of grief and parting, 
And something seemed to fill 

My heart with tears, while in my ears 
Resounded "whip-poor-will !" 
"Whippoorwill ! whippoorwill !" 
Sad and shrill — "whippoorwill!" 

'Twas but a shadowy sadness, 

That lightly passed away; 
But I have known the substance 

Of sorrow, since that day. 
For nevermore at twilight, 

Beside the silent mill, 
I'll wait for you, in the falling dew, 

And hear the whip-poor-will. 

"Whippoorwill ! whippoorwill !" 

Sad and shrill — "whippoorwill !" 



130 HOME AUTHORS— PEXXSYLVAXIA 

But if you still remember, 

In that fair land of light, 
The pains and fears that touch us 

Along this edge of night, 
I think all earthly grieving, 

And all our mortal ill, 
To you must seem like a boy's sad dream, 

Who hears the whip-poor-will. 

"Whippoorwill ! whippoorwill !" 

A passing thrill — "whippoorwill !" 

From Poems of Henry van Dyke, copyright, 191 1, by- 
Charles Scribner's Sons. 

HOME READING. 

The Other Wise Man. 
The Blue Flower. 
Fisherman's Luck. 
Who Follow the Flag. 



OWEN WISTER 
Lawyer, Short Story Writer, and Novelist 

The author of The Virginian, — for this book is his 
informal introduction to thousands of Americans who 
do not know him personally, — was born in Philadel- 
phia. He is proud of his native state. Other dis- 
tinguished writers may seek a secluded life in the 
mountains or woods of Canada and Xew England, 
but the humming law office in the West End Trust 
Building of Philadelphia is just right for him. 

He, too, has seen foreign peoples and countries. 
That is why he likes Philadelphia. When he w r as ten 
years old, he was taken to Europe by his parents and 
there put to school. His education continued in 
Switzerland, in England and in Rome. At the age of 
thirteen he entered a private American school to pre- 
pare for Harvard. His chief interest at school and 
college was in music, literature being secondary, al- 
though he edited school and college papers. During 
his senior year at Harvard, his first poem was accepted 
by the Atlantic Monthly, for which he received twenty- 
five dollars. Even with this encouragement he did not 
seem inclined toward writing as a profession. He had 
received the highest honors in music when graduated 

131 



132 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

from Harvard, and went to Paris to study under a 
famous master. Circumstances, however, compelling 
him to return to^ America, he entered Harvard Law 
School, and in due time was admitted to practice at 
the Philadelphia bar. 

During these years he published occasional verse 
and prose, but these were incidental. By accident, 
shortly after entering upon the practice of law, he 
drifted into writing short stories of Western life, first 
published in Harper's Magazine. Since that time he 
has devoted his energy to literature. His stories of 
life in the West are true to conditions as he knew 
them in the early days, when Wyoming was the home 
of the antelope and of the cowboy and of the bad 
man. All these' are changed now, but Mr. Wister 
keeps alive those days in the tales which he has told. 
These stories are found in Members of the Family and 
in his truly big novel The Virginian, which by many 
critics and readers is esteemed the most representative 
novel born in America. 

Mr. Wister is a rare traveler of the Bayard Taylor 
type, both throughout this country and throughout 
Europe. He has been in every state in the Union 
many times. He knows the United States better than 
most men, because his travels are those of a man 
of leisure taken for the sake of enjoyment and obser- 
vation, and not hurried by business engagements. It 
was his first visit to the West that laid the foundation 
for his stories. 

Mr. Wister finds his chief diversions in riding on 



OWEN WISTER 133 

horseback, trout-fishing, and in hunting big game. He 
is fond of wild animals, especially birds, raccoons, 
squirrels, and others that can be tamed. 

(Born, July 14, 1860; living). 



SPIT-CAT CREEK 

The cabin on Spit-Cat Creek lies lonely among the 
high pastures, and looks down to further loneliness 
across many slanting levels of pine-tops. These ascend 
successively in smooth, odorous, evergreen miles until 
they reach the open valley. Here runs the stage road, 
if you can discern it, from the railway to the con- 
tinuously jubilant cow-town of Likely, Wyoming; and 
here, when viewed from the cabin through a field- 
glass, you can readily distinguish an antelope from a 
stone in the clear atmosphere which commonly pre- 
vails. The windows of the cabin are three, and looking 
in through any of them you can see the stove, the table, 
and the ingenious structure which does duty as a bed. 
During the season of snow from November to May, 
the cabin (in the days of which I speak) was dwelt 
in by no one; while through the open weather some 
person of honesty and resource would be sent thither 
from the headquarters ranch at Sunk Creek two or 
three times, to stay no longer than his duties required, 
and to come back with his report as soon as they should 
be performed. Such a man would live here with 
canned food and the small stove, seldom having other 
company than his own, and, if he had ears for the 
music of nature, the singing pines would often com- 

i34 



OWEN WISTER 135 

panion him, he could hear now and again some unseen 
bird crying as it passed among them, and always the 
voice of Spit-Cat. This stream foamed by the cabin 
to fall and wander deviously away into the great, dis- 
tant silence of the mountains. Likely was eighteen 
miles distant, and to this place the man could ride in 
four hours by a recently discovered trail, w T hich was 
the shorter one, and followed the smaller tributary 
stream of Spit-Kitten ; and sometimes the man did so 
ride for his mail, or for more canned food, or for a 
game of chance and female company, in the continu- 
ously jubilant cow-town of Likely, Wyoming. 

Upon a midday in June, had you secretly peered 
through any of the windows in the cabin, you could 
have seen a seated man, tightly curved over the table 
and apparently dying in convulsions brought on by 
poison; for the signs of a newly finished meal were 
near him. There was a coffee-pot, and a dish of 
bacon, and three quarters of a pie. But it was merely 
Scipio Le Moyne endeavoring to write a letter ; and no 
task more excruciating was known to this young man. 

"Dear friend/' he had begun, "i got no dictionary, 
but—" 

At this point a heavy blot had intervened as he 
was changing the personal pronoun into a capital I. 

"Oh, gosh !" he sighed, and for a while could spell 
no more. He sat back, staring at the paper. "It's not 
to a girl," he presently muttered. "I guess I'll not 
start a fresh sheet." And while the perspiring Scipio 
laid his nose to his pen and dragged himself onward 
from word to word, a bad old gentleman with a black 



136 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

coat and a white beard was coming stealthily up from 
the valley through the thick pines. He was still some 
miles away, and he meant to look in at one of the 
windows, and regulate his conduct according to what 
he should then see. He was by no means sure that 
Scipio had what he wanted, which was. as much money 
as he could get, or any fraction thereof; but he had 
a shrewd suspicion that he could ascertain this without 
any extreme use of deadly weapons. 

Scipio Le Moyne was making his first stay in the 
Spit-Cat cabin, and in his mind there welled a com- 
placency not to be justified; for when a thick roll of 
money is in a man's trousers, and the man's trousers 
are upon the man, and the man is writing a letter at a 
table, you see at once how unsafe the money is if the 
man's six-shooter is lying out of reach on the bed be- 
hind him. It should be hanging at his hip, or in the 
armhole of his waistcoat, or stuck elsewhere handily 
about his immediate person. And so it would have 
been on any ordinary day of Scipio's life ; but alas ! on 
this day he was writing a letter, and was therefore 
not quite accountable. There were many things that he 
did not enjoy — cooking, for example, or a bucking 
pony, or gun trouble in a saloon; but these worries 
he could usually meet. The only crisis which invari- 
ably disturbed him (except, of course, having to talk to 
Eastern ladies when they visited the Judge's ranch) 
was to be face to face with ink and pen. After his mid- 
day meal this noon he reclined upon his bed, putting 
off the hateful moment. Thus recumbent he had un- 
buckled his belt for comfort and got none, for the 



OWEN WISTER 137 

letter made him restless. At length, with a mind ab- 
sent from everything save the coming ink and pen, 
he had gone to them, forgetting his revolver among 
the rumpled blankets. 

"Dear friend I got no dictionery but if any of my 
spelling raises your suspicions you can borrow a dic- 
tionery at your own end and theirby correct my state- 
ments which are otherwise garranteed to be strictly 
accurite. Hope you are well I am same. Have a good 
notion not to sine this for you will know my tracks 
without more information. Well buisniss first and 
I will try run in a little pleasure for you if my nerve 
holds out but that blot will tell you I am not myself 
just now. You said I was shameless but you are dead 
wrong about me. To think of the way you lied to 
those poor boys about the frogs has made me blush in 
bed after many a day when my own concience was at 
piece. I have looked after the new ditches I had to 
attend to them a whole lot they are all right now but 
they were not the young yellowleg who calls himself 
a civil engineer I guess becaus he looks at a grade 
through a machine on three sticks instead of with his 
naked eye was making trouble. He was arranging 
for the water from Crow Canyon to run up hill. We 
got it started the right way yesterday but that civil 
engineer does too much fingering with his pencil to suit 
me he has a whole box full of sums in arithmetic. 
The fences are satisfactory. I was obliged to turn 
half the cattle back the man thought I was one of those 
who do not know a cow when they see one but he has 



138 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

gone home realizing his poor judgment. And now that 
is all except I am paying off the extra hands at the 
Flat Iron outfit to-morrow or next day sure and now 
for pleasure as my hands has got limbered up wonder- 
ful and no longer abliged to blast out every word with 
giant powder like I had to all around the start where 
you see those blots. I guess the words are going to 
get to chasing each other off this pen before I am 
through telling you something. 

"I have noticed a thing. Be the first to tell a joke 
on yourself it deadens the blow. Well Honey Wiggin 
has found out about this so I am going to hurry up and 
get ahead of his news. Likely is the town here as you 
know and twenty hours is still the record for driving 
to it from the railroad but there is a new trail from 
here to Likely by Spit-Kitten it saves an hour so I 
am living an hour nearer the fashion than you told me 
I would be when you gave me this job. But it was by 
no means to be fashionable that I had to go over to 
Likely though it is a good place for a man who wants 
to and this cabin is not fashionable a little bit but my 
flour gave out. The last of it was eat up by Honey 
Wiggin who stopped here one night and told me about 
the trail by Spit-Kitten witch he claimed was easy 
except in one place by what they call the Little Pas- 
ture. You come on the fence on the side hill up among 
the trees where they have been cut down some and 
Honey said follow the fence a good ways maybe three 
miles he thought but not more and you could see the 
place where the trail took off down the hill through 
the same kind of trees pretty thin growing and pines 



OWEN WISTER 139 

mostly till you would come to the edge and see the 
town down below about half an hour more riding. 
Honey went over the mountain to Flat Iron and I 
caught up my horse and started for Likely. The trail 
was all right unless for a horse packed heavy and I 
did not hurry for I knew I had the night to put in in 
town and I was in no haste to get there because I could 
have no enjoyment w T hen I did on account of the 
money. I was invited a lot when I got there but though 
I have been going to bed the same day I got up for 
many weeks I was taking no risk. But that is not my 
point it is the Little Pasture I want to speak of. It 
got shady while I was following the fence which I 
struck all right but I did not mind and I was studying 
up something to tell any folks that might inquire about 
the money for Flat Iron for I have practiss lying I am 
quick at it like you. Well sir I went along getting up 
some remarks and then picking out them I considered 
to be the most promising but after a while I says to 
myself it must be most three miles I have come along 
this fence. But Honey Wiggin is not special close 
about distances, and so I went along rejecting some 
of the remarks, I had picked out and putting stronger 
ones in their place and pretty soon I knew I must have 
come five miles anyway for Japan can walk three miles 
an hour and I had looked at my watch. I made Japan 
lope and then I made him gallup and then something 
struck me like a flash and I got off him and tied my 
handkerchief to the fence and me and Japan gallupped 
like we was both crazy and it was not twenty minits 
till we came round to my handkerchef again. I expect 



140 HOME AUTHORS— PEXXSYLVAXIA 

the pasture is three miles round but cannot say how 
many times I circled her. I struck out for myself then 
and come to another fence and that was the one Honey 
meant, only he says now he told me to look out and not 
take the first fence. 

"In Likely I went to bed the same day I got up 
and I slept in my pants with the money and can say 
I will be glad when — " 

Here Scipio Le Moyne looked up from his letter, 
for the old gentleman stood in the door and wished 
him good morning. It was not morning, but let that 
go. The old gentleman had taken his observations 
through the window behind Scipio and had been much 
pleased to notice the six-shooter among the blankets. 
He had observed everything: the pie, the letter, all 
things inside the cabin, and also that outside the 
cabiti Scipio's horse was grazing in the little field, 
and therefore not instantly serviceable. His own 
animal he had tied to a tree a little distance within 
the timber. 

"Good morning," he said. 

Scipio's entire inward arrangements gave a mon- 
strous leap, but his outward start was very slight. 
"Hello, Uncle Pasco \" said he cheerfully. "Are y'u 
lost?" And he sat in his chair quite still. 

Uncle Pasco stood blinking in his usual way. 
"No," he returned. "Not lost. Just off trappin' 
That's what." His voice was an old man's, dry and 
chirping, and his sentence proceeded in short hops. 
He had seen Scipio's one-quarter inch of movement, 
and he read that movement with admirable insight: 



OWEX WISTER 141 

it had been a quickly arrested and choked impulse to 
get to those blankets. And Scipio had done some 
reading, too. He saw Uncle Pasco's eye measuring 
distances, and he could discern no sign whatever of 
pistol upon the old gentleman. This rendered him 
extremely cautious, and his thoughts worked at a re- 
markable speed. Uncle Pasco did not have to think 
so quickly, for he had begun his meditations in 
Likely several days ago, and they were all finished as 
far as they could be up to the present juncture. 
Even the most ripened strategist must leave some 
moves to be determined by the fluctuations of the 
battle. 

"Been off trappin'," repeated Uncle Pasco. 
"What luck?" Scipio inquired. 
"Poor. Poor. Beaver gettin' cleaned out of this 
country. That's what." 

"Better sit down and eat," said Scipio. "Take 
your coat off and stay a while." 

Uncle Pasco's glance rested on the pie a mo- 
ment, and then upon Scipio's ink-covered sheets. 
"M — well," he said doubtfully, for Scipio's ease had 
now put him in doubt, "I got to get back to Likely. 
Pie looks good. Pie like mother made. That's what. 
M — well, your're busy. Guess you want to write your 
letter." 

Scipio now looked at his letter, and drew in- 
spiration from it, a forlorn hope of inspiration. "Why, 
you don't need to start for Likely so soon," he re- 
marked with a persuasive whine. "What was the use 
in stoppin' at all? Eat the balance of the pie and take 
the new trail — if your packs are not loaded heavy." 



142 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

"Spit-Kitten?" said Uncle Pasco. 

"Yep/' said Scipio. "Saves an hour." 

"Ain't been over it," said Uncle Pasco. 

"Can't miss it," said Scipio. "Your pack's light?" 

"M — well," answered Uncle Pasco, doubtfully, 
"fairly light." 

"Sit down," said Scipio. "I'll tell y'u about the 
trail while you're eatin' the pie." He made as if to 
rise and offer the only chair in the room to Uncle 
Pasco. This brought Uncle Pasco immediately to his 
side. 

"Keep a-sittin'," the old gentleman urged. "Keep 
a-sittin', and draw me a map. That's what. Map of 
Spit-Kitten." 

"Here," began Scipio, wriggling his pen across a 
blank sheet, "runs Spit-Cat. This here cross is this 
cabin. Stream's runnin' this way. Understand?" 

"That's plain," said Uncle Pasco. 

"Here," and Scipio wriggled his pen at right 
angles to the first wriggle, "comes Spit-Kitten into 
the main creek — right above this cabin. See? Well. 
Now." Scipio began dotting lines. "You follow the 
little creek up, so. Then you cross over to the left 
bank, so. And you go right up out of a little canyon 
(you can't if your packs is heavy loaded, for its awful 
steep and slippery for pretty near a hundred yards) 
and you come out on top clear going — gosh ! I've got 
to take another sheet of paper — well, now y'u go down 
easy a mile or two and keep swinging to your right, 
and about here" — Scipio now sprinkled some points 
on the paper — "the trees begin gettin' scattery and you 



OWEX WISTER 143 

look out for a fence on your left. You follow that 
•fence for — well, I'd not say whether it's three miles 
or four — it's that noo pasture the Seventy-six outfit 
calls their Little Pasture, and before y'u come to 
the corner where there's a gate by a gushin' creek I 
don't know the name of, you'll notice the hill goin' 
down to your right all over good grass and mighty 
few trees, and if it's dark you'll see the lights of the 
town below and the trail takes off right about where 
you'll be standing this way" (Scipio scratched an 
arrow), "and don't y'u mind if it looks like a little- 
worn trail, for that's the way it is, and y'u can't miss 
it on that hillside. See?" 

"That's plain as day," said Uncle Pasco, accepting 
the two sheets of the map and sliding them into his 
own pocket. He still stood beside Scipio, irresolutely, 
considering the lumpy appearance of Scipio's pocket. 
A handkerchief and a bag of tobacco might produce 
such a bulge. 

"Fine day," said Scipio. "Better stay a while." 

"Good w r eather right along now," said Uncle 
Pasco. 

"Time it was," said Scipio, "after the wettin' the 
month of May gave us. Boys doin' anything in town 
lately?" 

"Oh, gay, gay," returned Uncle Pasco. And he 
ran a pistol against Scipio's head. "Out with it," he 
commanded. "Cough up." 

It is possible, under these circumtsances, to refuse 
to cough, and to perform instead some rapid athletics 
which result in a bullet-hole in the wall or ceilmg, to 



144 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

be forever after pointed to. But the odds are so heavy 
that the hole will be in neither the wall nor the ceiling 
that many people of undoubted valor have found 
coughing more discreet. Scipio coughed. 

Uncle Pasco now marched to the bed, and appro- 
priated Scipio's pistol. "J us t: for the present," he 
exclaimed. 

"Uncle Pasco," resumed Scipio, mild as a dove, 
and never stirring from his chair, "you have learned 
me something to-day. It's expensive education. I'll 
not say it isn't. But I'm going to tell y'u where I went 
wrong. I'd ought to have acted more careless in Likely 
that night. I'd ought to have taken a whirl some- 
wheres. Bein' so quiet exposed my hand to y'u. But 
see here, I had everybody fooled but you." 

"You're a kid," responded Uncle Pasco, but with 
indulgence. "You be good. Keep a-sittin' right there. 
Pie like mother made." And with the pie in one hand 
and his pistol in the other he made a comfortable 
lunch. 

"It was my over-carefulness, warn't it?" persisted 
Scipio. "I have sure paid y'u good to know!" 

"You're a kid," Uncle Pasco, with unchanged in- 
dulgence, repeated. "You'll do in time. Keep study- 
ing seasoned men. That's what." And he finished 
his meal. "You'll find your six-shooter in the place 
where I'll put it." 

The old gentleman opened the door, and, leaving 
Scipio in the chair, walked briskly by the corral into 
the trees and mounted his old pink mare. From the 



OWEN WISTER 145 

door of the cabin Scipio watched him amble away 
along the banks of Spit-Cat. 

"Pie like mother made!" he muttered. "You 
patch-sewed bread-basket! Why, you fringypanted 
walking delegate, I'll agitate your system till your back 
teeth are chewin' your own sweet-breads !" He seized 
up a rope and began walking to where his horse was 
pasturing. "I could forgive him takin' the money," he 
continued. "He outplayed me. . But — " Scipio was 
silent for a few yards, and 'then "Pie like mother 
made !" he burst out again. 

And now, reader, please rise with me in the air 
and look down like a bird at the trail of Spit-Kitten. 
The afternoon has grown late, and shadow is ascend- 
ing among the thin pines by the Little Pasture. There 
goes Uncle Pasco, ambling easily along. He counts 
his money, and slaps his bad old leg with joy. With 
all those dollars he can render the next several months 
comfortable. Xow he consults Scipio's map, 4 and here, 
sure enough, he comes to the fence, just as Scipio 
said he would come ; that fence he was to follow for 
three miles, perhaps, or four. Uncle Pasco slaps his 
leg again, and gives a horrid, unconscientious cackle. 
And now he hangs Scipio's pistol on a post of the 
fence and proceeds. While pleasing thoughts of San 
Francisco and champagne fill his mind as he rides, 
there comes Scipio along the trail after him at a nicely 
set interval. All is working with the agreeable pre- 
cision of a clock. Scipio recovers his pistol and after 
tying his horse out of sight a little way down the hill, 



146 HOME AUTHORS— PEXXSYLVAXIA 

he runs back and sits snug behind a tree close to the 
fence, waiting. He looks at his watch. "It took Japan 
and me twenty minutes to go around at a gallop," he 
observes. "Uncle Pasco ain't goin' half that fast." 
Scipio continues to wait with his six-shooter ready. 
In due time he pricks up his ears and rises upon his 
feet behind the tree. Next, he steps forth with his 
smile of an angel — but a fallen angel. 

"Pie like mother made," he remarks musically. 

Why tell of Uncle Pasco's cruel surprise? It is 
not known if he had gone round the fence more than 
once; but the town of Likely saw the dreadful condi- 
tion of his clothes as he rode in that night. It was 
almost no clothes. 

At that hour Scipio w r as finishing his letter to the 
foreman : — 

" — this risponisibillity is shed/' had been the un- 
written fragment of his sentence when it was cut 
short, and he now completed it, and went on: — 

"Quite a little thing has took place just now about 
that money. Don't jump for I am staying with it as 
you said to and I am liable to be staying with it as 
long as necessary but an old hobo held me up and got 
it off me and kept it for most three hours when I got 
it back off the old fool. I would not have throwed 
him around like I did if. he had been content to lift 
th^ cash but he had to insult me too said I was pie 
and next time he'll know a man should be civil no 
matter what his employment is. 

"I have noticed another thing. To shoot strait 



OWEN WISTER 147 

always go to bed the same day you get up and to think 
strait use same pallicy. 

"Your friend, 

"Scipio Le Moyne. 
"P. S. I am awful obliged to you." 

From Members of the Family. Copyright, 191 1, by The 
Macmillan Company. By special permission of the publishers. 



HOME READING. 

Journey in Search of Christmas. 

A Short Biography of General Grant. 

Members of the Family. 

The Virginian. 



JOHN L. SHROY 
Teacher and Poet 

John L. Shroy was born in Strasburg, Lancaster 
County, a few weeks before the birth of Richard 
Harding Davis in Philadelphia. His father was 
Pennsylvania-German, and his mother Scotch-Irish — 
the sturdy races which have made Lancaster County 
the wealthiest agricultural section in the United States. 
He likes the bag-pipes better than the "Watch on the 
Rhine," although loyal to the German traditions of his 
father. 

He is the youngest of a large family, and was 
named for his oldest brother John, who was killed in 
the Civil War in 1863, and for the great War Presi- 
dent — his full name being John Lincoln Shroy. 

His father was a plasterer, but farmed some land 
which was not enough to raise hay and to pasture the 
cow at the same time. Early in life, therefore, the 
youngest boy was engaged in watching cows for his 
father and neighbors along the roads south of Stras- 
burg. Minding Cows and a number of other poems 
were inspired directly by this dreamy, lonely life. 

He entered the Strasburg borough schools at the 
age of six. At fourteen he began to work at his 

148 



JOHN L. SI1ROY 149 

father's trade between April and October, going to 
school in the winter months. After graduating at 
Strasburg High School, he followed his trade for two 
years, when realizing the need of a broader education 
he attended Millersville Xormal School for three suc- 
cessive winters, graduating in the Scientific Course. 

He first taught school in Blue Ball, a quiet little 
village in Lancaster County, and the next term moved 
in toward Lancaster a few miles, to New Holland. He 
has been Superintendent of Schools in Doylestown. 
Bucks County, and in Cheltenham Township. For the 
past sixteen years he has been a Supervising Principal 
of schools in Philadelphia. 

The scenes of many of his poems are placed in 
Lancaster County, particularly around Millersville 
Xormal and at the old Strasburg homestead, now 
owned by Mr. Shroy. Here he spends his summer 
vacations, surrounded by shade and fruit trees of 
which he is so fond. 

His poems have been collected in a volume called 
Be a Good Boy; Good-Bye. The poem Give Us a 
Place to Play is a sympathetic plea for playgrounds. 

(Born, March 29, 1864; living). 



GIVE US A PLACE TO PLAY 

"Git out," yells the Cop. " 't I'll soon put a stop 
To y'ur nerve rackin din, by runnin' you in. 
You won't play on the street, when I'm on this beat, 
So chase_ y'urself hence. Git away from that fence." 
An' the Cop he's the law an' we've got to obey, 
But he don't tell us what 'r where we can play. 

"Git out," yells the man when we kick his ash-can, 
Then he calls us vile toughs, an' villains an' roughs, 
An' names if I said would knock mother down dead. 
We run all our might, to get out of his sight, 
An' bump into people who kick us away, 
An' growl, but don't mention a place we can play. 

"Git out of the way," yells a man with a dray, 
As he nearly runs down my chum, Billy Brown ; 
He raises his whip, and then all of us skip. 
But we only change streets, for where else can we go 
To escape Cops and drivers, does anyone know? 

If you were a lad, didn't mean to be bad, 

Had no place to meet, except in the street, 

No place to play ball, 'r "tagger" at all, 

No place just to — yell, when y'ur feelin' real well, 

Now, honest and true, what on earth would you do? 



150 



JOHN L. SHROY 151 

Why, you'd swear and make bets, an' smoke cigarettes; 
You'd gamble an' fight, an' throw stones just for spite. 
You'd try to live down to the names you were named ! 
An' you'd lie, with the gang; without feelin' ashamed. 

Big Brothers of ours, we want to do right 
But try as we will, it's a hard, uphill fight. 
We'd rather play ball in a place where we dare, 
Than skulk near a corner an' gamble an' swear. 
We'd rather clim' ladders an' act on a bar, 
Than dodge a policeman 'r hang on a car. 
It's up to you, Brothers ; come, please don't delay, 
But establish a place where us fellows can play. 



This poem and the three following are used by per- 
mission of the author. 



I'VE GOTTO GO TO SCHOOL 



Where is the good ol' summer time that I've so lately known? 
It's gone way back an' settled down an' left me sad an' lone. 
Where is the kite I used to fly? Go ask the high pole wires. 
Where is the little yacht I made? Broke up for makin' fires. 
Where are the nice long tramps I took? And where's the 

swimmin' pool? 
Them things is gone, for mother says, I've gotto go to school. 



Good-bye to forts that I have dug, to places where I've played. 
Good-bye to trees that I have clum, to friends that I have 

made. 
Good-bye to rollin' on the grass, a-hummin' good ol' tunes. 
Good-bye to doin' as I pleased in long ol' afternoons. 



Las' night I heard my father say, "It seems a kind of shame, 
To stop that boy from runnin' wild, an' settle down so tame. 
Let's keep him home a week or so until it gets more cool." 
But mother shook her head — and so, I've gotto go to school. 

Good-bye to sayin' "ain't" an' "got," an' "me" instead of "I." 
Good-bye to every thing but set an be as good as pie. 
I'll bet I'll be the very first to break some kind of rule. 
No use to kick when mother says, I've gotto go to school. 



152 



BE A GOOD BOY; GOOD-BYE 

How oft in my dreams I go back to the day 

When I stood at our old wooden gate, 
And started to school in full battle array.. 

Well armed with a primer and slate. 
And as the latch fell I thought myself free, 

And gloried, I fear, on the sly, 
Till I heard a kind voice that whispered to me : 

"Be a good boy ; good-bye !" 

"Be a good boy ; good-bye !" It seems 

They followed me all these years. 
They have given a form to my youthful dreams 

And scattered my foolish fears. 
They have stayed my feet on many a brink 

Unseen by a blinded eye ; 
For just in time I would pause and think : 

"Be a good boy ; good-bye !" 

Oh, brother of mine, in the battle of life, 

Just starting or nearing its close, 
This motto aloft in the midst of* the strife 

Will conquer wherever it goes. 
Mistakes you will make, for each of us errs. 

But, brother, just honestly try 
To accomplish your best. In whatever occurs 

"Be a good boy; good-bye!" 



153 



THE TEACHER HAS A PICK ON ME 

All trouble that is hanging 'round comes finally my way — 

The teacher has a pick on me. 
She keeps me in at recess and denies me all my play, 

Because she has a pick on me. 
She makes me do my misspelled words a hundred times or 

more, 
She makes me do my tables till my finger joints are sore, 
She makes me clean the ink up that I spill upon the floor, 

Because she has a pick on me. 

She makes me pay some time off for the notes that I forget, 

The teacher has a pick on me. 
She tells my mother when she sees me smoke a cigarette, 

Because she has a pick on me. 
She makes me study lessons that I say I know by heart — 
The reason I can't say them is, I can't think how they start — 
When I kick Jim beneath the seat the teacher takes Jim's part, 

Because she has a pick on me. 

The very smallest thing I do she manages to see — 

The teacher has a pick on me. 
She knows that I am talking when her back is turned to me, 

Because she has a pick on me. 
One day I didn't feel like work and talked back at her fine, 
She wrote a little note to Dad that he was asked to sign. 
He licked me like the mischief, said, "You've got to toe the 
line." 

And now Dad's got a pick on me. 

HOME READING. 

Be a Good Boy, Good-Bye. 

154 



RICHARD HARDING DAVIS 
Novelist and Playwright 

The most productive of all Pennsylvania writers 
is Richard Harding Davis, who was born in Philadel- 
phia during the Civil War. From both of his parents 
he inherited an aptitude for writing. His mother 
was Rebecca Harding Davis, of Washington County, 
who achieved early success in literature, — and that in 
an age when women who wrote for publication were 
frowned upon. His father was for more than forty 
years a distinguished editor of Philadelphia news- 
papers. 

As a young man Richard was fortunate in meet- 
ing persons of his own age who afterwards were 
destined to make history. While on a vacation in 
Washington County, he became acquainted with a 
boy by the name of Philo McGiffin. Years later this 
young man, as commander of the Chinese fleet against 
the Japanese at the battle of Yulu River, was the first 
American to be under the terrific fire of modern naval 
warfare. But that is another story. Mr. Davis has 
told all about it. 

He received an education at Lehigh and Johns 
Hopkins universities, and began life as a wage-earner 



156 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

on a newspaper in Philadelphia. Later he ventured 
on the broader field of journalism in New York. 
However, he had already written Gallegher, a delight- 
ful newspaper story inspired by his own experiences. 
On the outbreak of the war between Greece and 
Turkey, he went to the front and reported for London 
and New York newspapers. Since that time he has 
been a war correspondent in many conflicts— -Spanish- 
American, Boer-British, Russian-Japanese, all of 
which were fertile sources for essays and stories. He 
will be remembered as one of the greatest of war cor- 
respondents. 

As a traveler he has seen as much of the world as 
did Bayard Taylor. The wilds of Africa and the 
depths of India have called him ; South and Central 
America have been revealed by him in charming 
sketches and novels ; his own country inspired him to 
write The West from a Car Window. 

He has a beautiful summer home at Marion, Mas- 
sachusetts, and a winter home at Mt. Kisco, New 
York. He is devoted to outdoor life — rides horses, 
bicycles, and takes long walks with his dogs of which 
he is very fond. The Bar Sinister is one of the finest 
dog stories ever written. 

A number of his stories have been dramatized. 

(Born, April 18, 1864; living). 



THE HEART OF THE GREAT DIVIDE 

I. 

The City of Denver probably does more to keep 
the Eastern man who is mining or ranching from 
returning once a year to his own people, and from 
spending his earnings at home, than any other city 
in the West. It lays its charm upon him, and stops 
him half-way, and he decides that the journey home is 
rather long, and puts it off until the next year, and 
again until the next, until at last he buys a lot and 
builds a house, and only returns to the East on his 
wedding journey. Denver appeals to him more than 
do any of these other cities, for the reason that the 
many other Eastern men who have settled there are 
turning it into a thoroughly Eastern city — a smaller 
New York in an encircling range of white-capped 
mountains. If you look up at its towering office build- 
ings, you can easily imagine yourself, were it not for 
the breadth of the thoroughfare, in down-town New 
York ; and though the glimpse of the mountains at the 
end of the street in place of the spars and mast-heads 
of the East and North rivers undeceives you, the mud 
at your feet serves to help out the delusion. Denver 
is a really beautiful city, but — and this, I am sure, 

157 



158 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

few people in New York will believe — it has the worst 
streets in the country. Their mud or their dust, 
as the season wills it, is the one blot on the city's fair 
extent; it is as if the City Fathers had served a well- 
appointed dinner on a soiled table-cloth. But they say 
they will arrange all that in time. 

The two most striking things about the city to 
me were the public schools and the private houses. 
Great corporations, insurance companies, and capitalists 
erect twelve-story buildings everywhere. They do it 
for an advertisement for themselves or their business, 
and for the rent of the offices. But these buildings do 
not in any way represent a city's growth. You will 
find one or two of such buildings in almost every 
Western city, but you will find the people who rent 
the offices in them living in the hotels or in wooden 
houses on the outskirts. In Denver there are not 
only buildings, but .mile after mile of separate houses, 
and of the prettiest, strictest, and most proper archi- 
tecture. It is a distinct pleasure to look at these houses, 
and quite impossible to decide upon the one in which 
you would rather live. They are not merged together 
in solid rows, but stand apart, with a little green 
breathing-space between, each in its turn asserting its 
own individuality. The greater part of these are built 
of the peculiarly handsome red stone which is found 
so plentifully in the Silver State. It is not the red 
stone which makes them so pleasantly conspicuous, but 
the taste of the owner or the architect which has 
turned it to account. As for the public schools, they 
are more like art museums outside than school-houses ; 



RICHARD HARDING DAVIS 159 

and if as much money and thought in proportion are 
given to the instruction as have been put upon the 
buildings, the children of Denver threaten to grow up 
into a most disagreeably superior class of young per- 
sons. Denver possesses those other things which make 
a city livable, but the public schools and the private 
houses were to me the most distinctive features. The 
Denver Club is quite as handsome and well ordered a 
club as one would find in New York City, and the Uni- 
versity Club, which is for the younger men, brings the 
wanderers from different colleges very near and pleas- 
antly together. Its members can sing more different 
college songs in a given space of time than any other 
body of men I have met. The theatres and the hotels 
are new and very good, and it is a delight to find ser- 
vants so sufficiently civilized that the more they are 
ordered about and the more one gives them to do, the 
more readily they do it, knowing that this means that 
they are to be tipped. In the other Western cities, 
where this pernicious and most valuable institution is 
apparently unknown, a traveler has to do everything 
for himself. 

You will find that the people of a city always pride 
themselves on something which the visitor within their 
gates would fail to notice. They have become familiar 
with those features which first appeal to him, have out- 
grown them, and have passed on to admire something 
else. The citizen of Denver takes a modest pride in 
the public schools, the private houses, and the great 
mountains, which seem but an hour's walk distant and 
are twenty miles away; but he is proudest before all 



i(5o HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

of two things — of his celery and his cable-cars. His 
celery is certainly the most delicious and succulent that 
grows, and his cable-cars are very beautiful white and 
gold affairs and move with the delightfully terrifying 
speed of a toboggan. Riding on these cable-cars is one 
of the institutions of the city, just as in the summer a 
certain class of young people in New York find their 
pleasure in driving up and down the Avenue on the top 
of the omnibuses. But that is a dreary and sentimental 
journey compared with a ride on the grip seat of a 
cable-car, and every one in Denver patronizes this 
means of locomotion whether on business or on pleasure 
bent, and whether he has carriages of his own or not. 
There is not, owing to the altitudes, much air to spare 
in Denver at any time, but when one mounts a cable- 
car, and is swept with a wild rush around a curve, or 
dropped down a grade as abruptly as one is dropped 
down the elevator shaft in the Potter Building, what 
little air there is disappears, and leaves one gasping. 
Still, it is a most popular diversion, and even in the 
winter some of the younger people go cable-riding as 
we go sleighing, and take lap-robes with them to keep 
them warm. There is even a "scenic route, " which 
these cars follow, and it is most delightful. 

Denver and Colorado Springs pretend to be jeal- 
ous of one another; why, it is impossible to under- 
stand. One is a city, and the other a summer or health 
resort ; and we might as properly compare Boston and 
Newport, or New York and Tuxedo. In both cities the 
Eastern man and woman and the English cousin are 
much more in evidence than the born Western man. 



RICHARD HARDIXG DAVIS 161 

These people are very fond of their homes at Denver 
and at the Springs, but they certainly manage to keep 
Fifth Avenue and the Sound and the Back Bay prom- 
inently in mind. Half of those women whose husbands 
are wealthy — and every one out here seems to be in 
that condition — do the greater part of their purchasing 
along Broadway below Twenty-third Street, their letter- 
paper is stamped on Union Square, and their hus- 
bands are either part or whole owners of a yacht. It 
sounds very strange to hear them, in a city shut in by 
ranges of mountain peaks, speak familiarly of Larch- 
mont and Hell Gate and Xew London and "last year's 
cruise." Colorado Springs is the great pleasure resort 
•for the whole state, and the salvation and sometimes 
the resting-place of a great many invalids from all over 
the world. It lies at the base of Pike's Peak and 
Cheyenne Mountain, and is only an hour's drive from 
the great masses of jagged red rock known as the 
Garden of the Gods. Pike's Peak, the Garden of the 
Gods, and the Mount of the Holy Cross are the proud- 
est landmarks in the state. This last mountain was 
regarded for many years almost as a myth, for while 
many had seen the formation which gives it its name, 
no one could place the mountain itself, the semblance 
of the cross disappearing as one drew near to it. But 
in 1876 Mr. Hayden, of the Government Survey, and 
Mr. W. H. Jackson, of Denver, found it, climbed it, 
and photographed it, and since then artists and others 
have made it familiar. But it will never become so 
familiar as to lose aught of its wonderfully impressive 
grandeur. 



162 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

There are also near Colorado Springs those min- 
eral waters which give it its name, and of which the 
people are so proud that they have turned Colorado 
Springs into a prohibition town, and have made drink- 
ing the waters, as it were, compulsory. This is an 
interesting example of people who support home in- 
dustries. There is a casino at the Springs, where the 
Hungarian band plays in summer, a polo field, a manu- 
factured lake for boating, and hundreds of beautiful 
homes, fashioned after the old English country-house, 
even to the gate-keeper's lodge and the sundial on the 
lawn. And there are canons that inspire one not to 
attempt to write about them. There are also many 
English people who have settled there, and who vie 
with the Eastern visitors in the smartness of their 
traps and the appearance of their horses. Indeed, both 
of these cities have so taken on the complexion of the 
East that one wonders whether it is true that the 
mining towns of Creede and Leadville lie only twelve 
hours away, and that one is thousands of miles distant 
from the City of New York. 

It is possible that some one may have followed 
this series of articles, of which this is the last, from 
the first, and that he may have decided, on reading 
them, that the West is filled with those particular 
people and institutions of which these articles have 
treated, and that one steps from ranches to army posts, 
and from Indian reservations to mining camps with 
easy and uninterrupted interest. This would be, per- 
haps it is needless to say, an entirely erroneous idea. 
I only touched on those things which could not be 



RICHARD HARDiXG DAVIS 163 

found in the East, and said nothing of the isolation of 
these particular and characteristic points of interest, of 
the commonplace and weary distances which lay be- 
tween them and of the difficulty of getting from one 
point to another. For days together, while traveling to 
reach something of possible interest, I might just as 
profitably, as far as any material presented itself, have 
been riding through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or 
Ohio. Indians do not necessarily join hands with the 
cow-boys, nor army posts nestle at the feet of moun- 
tains filled with silver. The West is picturesque in 
spots, and, as the dramatic critics say, the interest is 
not sustained throughout. I confess I had an idea that 
after I had traveled four days in a straight line due 
west, every minute of my time would be of value, and 
that if each man I met was not a character he would 
tell stories of others who were, and that it would 
merely be necessary for me to keep my eyes open to 
have picturesque and dramatic people and scenes pass 
obligingly before them. I was soon undeceived in this, 
and learned that in order to reach the West we read 
about, it would be necessary for me to leave the rail- 
road, and that I must pay for an hour of interest with 
days of the most unprofitable travel. Matthew Arnold 
said when he returned to England, that he had found 
this country "uninteresting," and every American was 
properly indignant, and said he could have forgiven 
him any adjective but that. If Matthew Arnold 
traveled from Pittsburgh to St. Louis, from St. Louis 
to Corpus Christi, and from Corpus Christi back 
through Texas to Indian Territory, he not only has 



1 64 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

my sympathy, but I admire him as a descriptive writer. 
For those who find the level farm lands of Indiana, 
Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and the ranches of upper 
Texas, and the cactus of southern Texas, and the roll- 
ing prairie of the Indian Territory interesting, should 
travel from Liverpool to London on either line they 
please to select, and they will understand the English- 
man's discontent. Hundreds of miles of level mud and 
snow followed by a hot and sandy soil and uncultivated 
farm lands are not as interesting as hedges of haw- 
thorn or glimpses of the Thames or ivy-covered coun- 
try-houses in parks of oak. The soldiers who guard this 
land, the Indians who are being crowded out of it, and 
the cow-boys who gallop over it and around their army 
of cattle, are interesting, but they do not stand at the 
railroad stations to be photographed and to exhibit 
their peculiar characteristics. 

But after one leaves, these different states and 
rides between the mountain ranges of Colorado, he 
commits a sin if he does not sit day and night by the 
car window. It is best to say this as it shows the 
other side of the shield. 

You may, while traveling in the West, enjoy the 
picturesque excitement of being held up by train 
robbers, but you are in much more constant danger of 
being held up by commercial travelers and native 
Western men, who demand that you stand and deliver 
your name, your past history, your business, and your 
excuse for being where you are. Neither did I find 
the West teeming with "characters." I heard of them, 
and indeed the stories of this or that pioneer or des- 



RICHARD HARDIXG DAVIS 165 

perado are reaily the most vivid and most interesting 
memories I have of the trip. But these men have been 
crowded out, or have become rich and respectably 
commonplace, or have been shot, as the case may be. 
I met the men who had lynched them or who remem- 
bered them, but not the men themselves. They no 
longer overrun the country ; they disappeared with the 
buffalo, and the West is glad of it, but it is disappoint- 
ing to the visitor. The men I met were men of busi- 
ness, who would rather talk of the new court-house 
with the lines of the sod still showing around it than 
of the Indian fights and the killing of the bad men of 
earlier days when there was no court-house, and 
when the vigilance committee was a necessary evil. 
These were "well-posted" and "well-informed" citizens, 
and if there is one being I dread and fly from, it is a 
well-posted citizen. 

The men who are of interest in the West, and of 
whom most curious stories might be told, are the 
Eastern men and the Englishmen who have sought it 
with capital, or who have been driven there to make 
their fortunes. Some one once started a somewhat un- 
profitable inquiry as to what became of all the lost pins. 
That is not nearly so curious as to what becomes of all 
the living men who drop suddenly out of our acquain- 
tanceship or our lives, and who are not missed, but who 
are nevertheless lost. I know now what becomes of 
them ; they all go West. I met some men here whom 
I was sure I had left walking Fifth Avenue, and who 
told me, on the contrary, that they had been in the 
West for the last two years. They had once walked 



£66 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

Fifth Avenue, but they dropped out of the procession 
one day, and no one missed them, and they are out 
here enjoying varying fortunes. The brakesman on a 
freight and passenger train in southern Texas was a 
lower-class man whom I remembered at Lehigh Uni- 
versity as an expert fencer ; the conductor on the 
same train was from the same college town; the part 
owner of a ranch, whom I supposed I had left looking 
over the papers in the club, told me he had not been in 
New York for a year, and that his partner was "Jerry" 
Black, who, as I trust no one has forgotten, was one 
of Princeton's half-backs, and who I should have said, 
had any one asked me, was still in Pennsylvania. An- 
other man whom I remembered as a "society" reporter 
on a New York paper, turned up in a white apron as 
a waiter at the hotel in . I was somewhat em- 
barrassed at first as to whether or not he would wish 
me to recognize him, but he settled my doubts by 
winking at me over his heavily loaded tray, as much as 
to say it was a very good joke, and that he hoped I 
was appreciating it to its full value. We met later in 
the street, and he asked me with the most faithful 
interest of those whose dances and dinners he had once 
reported, deprecated a notable scandal among the Four 
Hundred which was filling the papers at that time, and 
said I could hardly appreciate the pity of such a thing 
occurring among people of his set. Another man, whom 
I had known very well in New York, turned up in 
San Antonio with an entirely new name, wife, and 
fortune, and verified the tradition which exists there 
that it is best before one grows to know a man too 



RICHARD HARDING DAVIS 167 

well, to ask him what was his name before he came 
to Texas. San Antonio seemed particularly rich in 
histories of those who came there to change their 
fortunes, and who had changed them most completely. 
The English gave the most conspicuous examples of 
these unfortunates — conspicuous in the sense that 
their position at home had been so good, and their 
habits of life so widely different. 

The proportion of young English gentlemen who 
are roughing it in the West far exceeds that of the 
young Americans. This is due to the fact that the 
former have never been taught a trade or profession, 
and in consequence, when they have been cheated out 
of the money they brought with them to invest, have 
nothing but their hands to help them, and so take to 
driving horses or branding cattle or digging in the 
streets, as one graduate of Oxford, sooner than write 
home for money, did in Denver. He is now teaching 
Greek and Latin in one of our colleges. The manner 
in which visiting Englishmen are robbed in the West, 
and the quickness with which some of them take the 
lesson to heart, and practice it upon the next English- 
man who comes out, or upon the prosperous English- 
man already there, would furnish material for a book 
full of pitiful stories. And yet one cannot help smiling 
at the wickedness of some of these schemes. Three 
Englishmen, for example, bought, as they supposed, 
thirty thousand Texas steers ; but the Texans who 
pretended to sell them the cattle drove the same three 
thousand head ten times around the mountain, as a 
dozen supers circle around the backdrop of a stage to 



168 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

make an army, and the Englishmen counted and paid 
for each steer ten times over. There was another 
Texan who made a great deal of money by advertising 
to teach young men how to become cow-boys and who 
charged them ten dollars a month tuition fee, and who 
set his pupils to work digging holes for fence-posts all 
over the ranch, until they grew wise in their genera- 
tion, and left him for some other ranch, where they 
were paid thirty dollars a month for doing the same 
thing. But in many instances it is the tables of San 
Antonio which take the greater part of the visiting 
Englishman's money. One gentleman, who for some 
time represented the Isle of Wight in the Lower House, 
spent three modest fortunes in the San Antonio 
gambling-houses, and then married his cook, which 
proved a most admirable speculation, as she had a 
frugal mind, and took entire control of his little in- 
come. And when the Marquis of Aylesford died in 
Colorado, the only friend in this country who could be 
found to take his body back to England was his first- 
cousin, who at that time was driving a hack through 
San Antonio. We heard stories of this sort on every 
side, and we met faro-dealers, cooks, and cow-boys 
who have served through campaigns in India or Egypt, 
or who hold an Oxford degree. A private in G troop. 
Third Cavalry, who was my escort on several scouting 
expeditions in the Garza outfit, was kind enough and 
quite able to tell me which club in London had the 
oldest wine-cellar, where one could get the best visit- 
ing-cards engraved, and why the Professor of Ancient 
Languages at Oxford was the superior of the instruc- 



RICHARD HARDIXG DAVIS i6g 

tor in like studies at Cambridge. He did this quite 
unaffectedly, and in no way attempted to excuse his 
present position. Of course, the value of the greater 
part of these stories depends on the family and per- 
sonality of the hero, and as I cannot give names, I 
have to omit the best of them. 

There was a little English boy who left San 
Antonio before I had reached it, but whose name and 
fame remained behind him. He was eighteen years 
of age and just out of Eton, where he had spent all 
his pocket-money in betting on the races through com- 
missioners. Gambling was his ruling passion at an age 
when ginger-pop and sweets appealed more strongly to 
his contemporaries. His people sent him to Texas with 
four hundred pounds to buy an interest in a ranch, 
and furnished him with a complete outfit of London - 
made clothing. An Englishman who saw the boy's 
box told me he had noted the different garments packed 
carefully away, just as his mother had placed them, and 
each marked with his name. The Eton boy lost the 
four hundred pounds at roulette in the first week after 
his arrival in San Antonio, and pawned his fine clothes 
in the next to "get back/' He lost all he ventured. 
At the end of ten days he was peddling fruit around 
the streets in his bare feet. He made twenty-five cents 
the first day, and carried it to the gambling-house 
where he had already lost his larger fortune, and told 
one of the dealers he would cut the cards with him for 
the money. The boy cut first, and the dealer won ; 
but the other was enough of a gambler to see that the 



i;o HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

dealer had stooped to win his last few pennies unfairly. 
The bay's eyes filled up with tears of indignation. 

"You thief!" he cried, "you cheated me!" 

The dealer took his revolver from the drawer of 
the table, and, pointing it at his head, said : "Do you 
know what we do to people who use that word in 
Texas? We kill them!" 

The boy clutched the table with both hands and 
flung himself across it so that his forehead touched 
the barrel of the revolver. "You thief!" he repeated, 
and so shrilly that every one in the room heard him. 
"I say you cheated me!" 

The gambler lowered the trigger slowly and tossed 
the pistol back in the drawer. Then he picked up a 
ten-dollar gold piece and shoved it towards him. 
"Here," he said, "that'll help take you home. You're 
too tough for Texas !" 

The other Englishmen in San Antonio filled out 
the sum and sent him back to England. His people are 
well known in London ; his father is a colonel in the 
Guards. 

There are a great many things one only remembers 
to say as the train is drawing out of the station, and 
which have to be spoken from the car window. And 
now that my train is so soon to start towards the East, 
I find there are many things which it seems most un- 
gracious to leave unsaid. I should like to say much of 
the hospitality of the West. We do not know such 
hospitality in the East. A man brings us a letter of 
introduction here, and we put him up at the club we 



RICHARD HARDTXG DAVIS 171 

least frequently visit, and regret that he should have 
come at a time when ours is so particularly crowded 
with unbreakable engagements. It is not so here. One 
might imagine the Western man never worked at all, 
so entirely is his time yours, if you only please to 
claim it. And from the first few days of my trip to 
the last, this self-effacement of my hosts and eagerness 
to please accompanied me wherever I went. It was the 
same in every place, whether in army posts or ranches, 
or among the most delightful coterie of the Denver 
Club, "who never sleep/' or on the border of Mexico, 
where "Bob" Haines, the sheriff of Zepata County,' 
Texas, before he knew who I or my soldier escort 
might be, and while we were still but dust-covered 
figures in the night, rushed into the house and ordered 
a dinner and beds for us, and brought out his last two 
bottles of beer. The sheriff of Zepata County, "who 
can shoot with both hands," need bring no letter of 
introduction with him if he will deign to visit me when 
he comes to New York. And as for that Denver 
Club coterie, they always know that the New York 
clubs are also supplied with electric buttons. 

And now that it is at an end, I find it hard to 
believe that I am not to hear again the Indian girls 
laughing over their polo on the prairie, or the regi- 
mental band playing the men on to the parade, and 
that I am not to see the officers' wives watching them 
from the line at sunset, as the cannon sounds its salute 
and the flag comes fluttering down. 

And yet New York is not without its good points. 

If any one doubts this, let him leave it for three 



i/2 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

months, and do one-night stands at fourth-rate hotels, 
or live on alkali water and bacon, and let him travel 
seven thousand miles over a country where a real- 
estate office, a Citizen's Bank, a Quick Order Res- 
taurant, with a few surrounding houses, make, as seen 
from the car window, a booming city where beautiful 
scenery and grand mountains are separated by miles 
of prairie and chaparral, and where there is no Diana 
of the Tower nor bronze Farragut to greet him daily 
as he comes back from work through Madison Square. 
He will feel a love for New York equal to the Chi- 
cagoan's love for his city, and when he sees across the 
New Jersey flats the smoke and the tall buildings 
and the twin spires of the cathedral, he will wish to 
shout, as the cow-boys do when they "come into 
town," at being back again in the only place where one 
can both hear the Tough Girl of the East Side ask for 
her shoes, and the horn of the Country Club's coach 
tooting above the roar of the Avenue. 

The West is a very wonderful, large, unfinished, 
and out-of-doors portion of our country, and a most 
delightful place to visit. I would advise every one in 
the East to visit it, and I hope to revisit it myself. 
Some of those who go will not only visit it, but will 
make their homes there, and the course of empire will 
eventually Westward take its way. But when it does, 
it will leave one individual behind it clinging closely to 
the Atlantic seaboard. 

Little old New York is good enough for him. 

— The West from a Car Window. 

By permission of Harper and Brothers. Copyright, 1892, 
by Harper and Brothers. 



RICHARD HARDING DAVIS 173 

HOME READING. 

Gallegher. 

The Bar Sinister. 

Soldiers of Fortune. 

Ransom's Folly. 

The West from a Car Window. 

With Both Armies in South Africa. 



ELSIE SINGMASTER 
Short Story Writer 

To Elsie Singmaster, descended from Pennsyl- 
vania-German ancestry on her father's side, has come 
the privilege of telling the most sympathetic and ap- 
preciative stories of the life of her people. She is 
proud of her blood, and no line that she has written 
can give offence to that large and loyal body of Penn- 
sylvania citizens whose language and customs axe 
an odd mixture of ancient German and modern Eng- 
lish. Her father is the Rev. John Alden Singmaster, 
president of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at 
Gettysburg. Many of her later years have been spent 
on the beautiful, but one time bloody, battlefield. 

She was born in Schuylkill Haven, attended public 
schools in Macungie, Lehigh County, and was grad- 
uated from Allentown High School and West Chester 
Normal School. She believes that the thorough drill of 
a good public school is the best a child can have. 
Higher education was obtained at Cornell University 
and at Radcliffe College. Those who have followed 
her early stories will recall that most of the scenes 
are placed in Lehigh, the county of her girlhood. Her 
latest stories are about the battlefield of Gettysburg. 

Recently she was married to Harold Lewars, a 

J 74 



ELSIE SIXGMASTER 175 

musician, of Harrisburg. Aside from writing she finds 
her greatest pleasure in music, reading, and house- 
keeping. 

Her contributions appear in the best class of 
magazines — The Atlantic Monthly, Century, Scribner's, 
and Harper s. All boys and girls will enjoy reading 
When Sarah Saved the Day and the sequel When 
Sarah Went to School, delightful stories of the strug- 
gles of a Pennsylvania-German girl. The Belsnickel, 
a short story, describes the joys of an old-fashioned 
German Christmas entertainment in the public schools. 

(Born, August 27, 1879; living). 



THE BELSNICKEL 

The Millerstown school, crowded almost to burst- 
ing, seemed to spend itself in one great sigh as the 
teacher rose to open the Christmas entertainment. 
It was the first elaborate entertainment for many years ; 
it was the first English entertainment in the history of 
Millerstown. Teacher and pupils had meant its char- 
acter to be a surprise, but fate had over-ruled their 
plans. There was only one person in the crowded 
room who did not know the title of every speech, the 
name of every song; only one who had not participated 
in some detail of the excited, almost agonized prepara- 
tion. That person was the guest who sat upon the 
platform. 

Katy Gaumer, than whom none had a better right, 
first told the secret. A week earlier, she stood in the 
Millerstown store, a scarlet "twilight" on her head, 
scarlet mittens on her hands, a scarlet shawl about her 
shoulders. Her thin legs, in their black stockings, 
completed her resemblance to a very gorgeous bird; 
she seemed, with her quick motions, her waving of 
her grandfather's newspaper in the faces of her au- 
dience, about to fly at them. Caleb Stemmel was 
speaking dolefully. Caleb Stemmel seldom spoke in 
any other way. 

176 



ELSIE SIXGMASTER 177 

"Nothing is any more like it was when I was 
young." 

"It is perhaps a good thing/" answered Katy Gau- 
mer, with the pertness of thirteen. . 

"We had entertainments that were entertain- 
ments — speeches and candy and a Belsnickel. We went 
to trouble; but these teachers, bah!" 

Katy Gaumer had no love for the teacher, but 
she hated Caleb Stemmel. Katy's loves and hates 
were as decided as all the rest of her emotions. 

"We are going to have an entertainment that will 
flax any of yours, Caleb Stemmel." 

"Yes ; you will get up and say a few old Dutch 
pieces, then you will go home." 

"Well, everything was Dutch when you were 
young/ 1 

"Yes ; but now things should be English. But you 
are too lazy. You will be pretty much ashamed of 
yourselves this year, that I can tell you." 

"Why this year?" 

"Because a visitor is coming." 

"Pooh! What do I care for a visitor?" 

"This is one that you care for." 

Katy was already half-way to the door, her black 
legs flying. She turned now, and went back. 

"Who is it?" 

Caleb Stemmel liked to tease. 

"Don't you wish you knew?" 

Katy Gaumer stamped her foot. She had respect 
for age in general, but not for Caleb Stimmel. 



i/8 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

"If you don't tell, I'll snowball you when it 
gives a snow once," she threatened. 

Caleb did not answer until he saw that Danny 
Koser was about to tell. 

"It is a governor coming," he said slowly. 

Katy Gaumer drew a step closer. No eyes of 
tanager or grosbeak could have shone blacker against 
scarlet plumage. 

"Do you mean — do you mean that Uncle Dan is 
coming home?" 

"Yes; your gran'pop he was here this afternoon, 
and he told us. And what will the governor think of 
Dutch Millerstown?" 

Once more Katy reached the door at the other 
end of the long room. She had a habit of forecasting 
her own actions : she could see herself pounding at the 
teacher's door, then racing to her grandfather's, her 
heart beating, beating, beating, her whole being in the 
glow of excitement which she loved, and of which she 
had little enough. Now she stopped, her hand on the 
latch. The secret must be told ; only by the aid of 
all the fathers and mothers in Millerstown could the 
entertainment be made adequate. There was no rea- 
son why she should not have the pleasure of the first 
announcement. 

"We are going to have an English entertainment, 
Caleb Stemmel," she cried. "We have been practising 
for a month already. Aha, Caleb Stemmel !" 

Outside she paused, and stretched out her arms. 
There was not a soul in sight. She looked up the 
street and down; she could see the last house at each 



ELSIE SJXGMASTER 179 

end of the village, and then the quiet country. The 
street-lamps were not lighted. Why should they be, 
to dim the light of the heavenly moon which hung 
above the Weygandt farm? Ten minutes ago she 
had been only little Katy Gaumer, with lessons learned 
for the morrow, bedtime hours off, hating the quiet 
village, and bored with life; now she was Katy Gau- 
mer, the grandniece of one of the great men of the 
world. If he would only help her, she might be any- 
thing — anything ! 

There was no one at hand to remind her that 
she was only one of twenty-odd grandnieces and 
nephews, and that a governor, after all, was not such 
a great man, since he had at least forty-five peers, and 
that there were even higher offices in the land. No 
Millerstonian would so have discounted his hero. 
Daniel Gaumer had made his own way and had 
achieved success. To this small relative he was greater 
than the President of the United States. If she could 
do well, if all the children did well, if some one would 
only say to him that it was largely her effort which 
made the entertainment a sucecss, what might he not 
do for her ! She might go to a higher school ; he might 
make her father and grandfather send her; he — 

But Katy never stopped to dream. She would 
prove to be a very good woman or perhaps a very 
bad one, but she would never be a lazy one or a 
mediocre one. With an excited gasp, she ran down 
the street. 

The teacher said not a word of reproof for her 
betrayal when she gasped out her news. He was in 



180 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

Miller-stown for only a few months, substituting for a 
friend and waiting for something to turn up. He was 
also a Pennsylvania German, but he would as soon 
have been called a Turk. He had changed his name 
from Schreiner to Carpenter, and the very sound of 
Pennsylvania German was unpleasant to him. He 
knew far better than any one in the village Daniel 
Gaumer's greatness. He sat now by the table, listen- 
ing to Katy, their eyes meeting for the first time in 
entire friendliness. 

"I told it because I knew, if Uncle Dan was com- 
ing—" 

"He is your uncle!" 

"My pop's uncle," explained Katy, proudly. "I 
never saw him. I knew, if he was coming, they would 
have to know their pieces better. Ollie Kuhns he 
won't learn his unless his pop thrashes him a couple o' 
times ; and Jimmie Weygandt he won't learn his until 
the very last minute unless his mom makes him, and 
then he will stick anyway, perhaps ; and they won't let 
us have the church organ to practice beforehand for 
the singing unless they know ; and everybody must 
practice all the time the words they can't say. I had 
to tell." 

"Exactly," agreed the teacher. His face was 
solemn ; he felt as though he were to appear before 
the State Board for an examination. He realized that 
these were things that he would never have thought of. 
He blessed the inspiration which had suggested an 
English entertainment, he blessed the energetic child 



ELSIE SIXGMASTER 181 

who had persuaded the others to take part. "Sit 
down, Katy." 

It gave Katy another thrill of joy to be thus 
solicited. 

"Not now. I am going to my gran'pop's ; then 
I'll come back." 

Now, on the afternoon of the entertainment, there 
was an air of excitement both within and without the 
school-room. Outside, the clouds hung low ; the 
winter wheat in the Weygandt fields seemed to have 
lost its brilliant green ; there was no color on the 
mountain-side, which had been warm brown and pur- 
ple in the morning sunshine. A snow-storm was 
brewing, the first of the season, and Millerstown re- 
joiced. Millerstown believed that a green Christmas 
made a fat graveyard. 

The school-room was almost unrecognizable. The 
walls were in reality brown, except where the black- 
boards made them still duller ; the desks were far 
apart, the space from the last seat, where the ill- 
behaved preferred to sit, to the teacher's desk, to 
which they made frequent trips for punishment, 
seemed interminable. This afternoon, however, there 
was neither dullness nor extra space. The walls were 
hidden by masses of crowfoot and pine, brought from 
the mountain ; the blackboard had vanished behind 
festoons of flags and red bunting. The children were 
so closely crowded together into a quarter of th£ 
room that one would have said that they could never 
extricate themselves ; into the other three quarters had 
squeezed and pressed almost all the fathers and 



i82 HOME AUTHORS— PEXXSYLVAXIA 

mothers of Millerstown. Grandfather and Grand- 
mother Gaumer were there, the latter with a large 
and mysterious basket, which she directed Katy to 
hide in the cloak-room, the former laughing with his 
famous brother. "Mommy Bets" Eckert, a generation 
older than Grandfather Gaumer, was there; and there 
were half a dozen babies who cooed and cried by 
turns, and at whom misanthropic Caleb Stemmel 
frowned. Not another soul could have crowded in. 

It was Katy who showed them to their seats, her 
cheeks redder than her red dress, her motions more 
bird-like than ever. Only she seemed able to keep her 
eyes from the platform, where the great man sat; 
only she seemed able to think. For Katy the play had 
begun. Was he not here? Had he not smiled at her? 
Was he not handsome and friendly, like Grandfather 
Gaumer? Were not her dreams coming true? 

Katy knew her part as she knew her own name. 
It was called "Annie and Willie's Prayer." It was 
long and hard for a tongue which, for all its strivings, 
could not yet say th and v with ease. But Katy would 
not fail, nor would Adam, her little brother, who lisped 
through "Hang up the Baby's Stocking." If only Ollie 
Kuhns knew "The Psalm of Life" and Jimmie Wey- 
gandt "There Is a Reaper Whose Name Is Death" as 
well ! They had known them this morning, — known 
them so well that they could say them backward, — but 
would they know them now? The children's faces 
were white; the very pine branches seemed to quiver 
with nervousness ; the teacher tried vainly to remember 
the English speech which he had carefully composed 



ELSIE S1XGMASTER 183 

and memorized. As he sat talking with the stranger, 
he frantically consoled himself with the recollection 
that examinations always terrified him; but that he 
was always better in a few minutes. 

Once he caught Katy Gaumer's eye and tried to 
smile. But Katy did not respond. She saw plainly 
enough what was the matter with him, and prickles of 
fright went up her backbone. His speech was to open 
the entertainment. Suppose he should fail ! Katy had 
seen panic sweep like fire down the ranks of would-be 
speakers: If he would only let her begin, she could 
not fail! 

But the teacher did not let her begin. No such 
simple way out of his difficulty occurred to his par- 
alyzed brain. The stillness in the room grew more 
deathlike ; the moment for opening came and passed ; 
Katy Gaumer, now in her seat, gazed at him sternly; 
and still he sat helpless. 

Then suddenly light flooded his soul. Why should 
he say anything at all. He would call on the stranger. 
It was perfectly true that a visitor's speech was never 
known to come anywhere but at the end of an enter- 
tainment. The teacher thought of that, but he did not 
care. The stranger should speak now, and thus set 
an example to the children. Hearing his easy English, 
they would have less trouble with th and v. Color 
came back to the teacher's cheek; only Katy Gaumer 
realized how terrified he had been. So elated was he 
at his deliverance that he introduced the stranger with- 
out stumbling. 

Daniel Gaumer had spoken for at least two min- 



1 84 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

utes before the shock of surprise reached the brains 
of his hearers. The children looked at him, refusing 
to believe their ears ; fathers and mothers nudged each 
other; the teacher's mouth opened. Only Katy Gau- 
mer sat unmoved, and Katy was too much astonished 
to stir. The distinguished stranger had been away 
from Millerstown for thirty years ; he was a graduate 
of a university; he had honorary degrees; the teacher 
had warned the children to look as though they under- 
stood him, whether they understood him or not : and 
now the distinguished stranger did not even address 
them in English, but spoke Pennsylvania German ! 

It came out so naturally, he seemed so like any 
other Millerstonian standing there, that they could 
hardly believe that he was distinguished or even that 
he was a stranger. He said that he had not been in 
that school-room for thirty years, and that if any 
one had asked him its dimensions, he would have said 
it would be difficult to throw a ball from corner to 
corner. And now he could almost reach across it ! 
He remembered Caleb Stemmel, and called him by 
name, and asked him whether he had any little boys 
and girls there to speak pieces, at which everybody 
laughed. Caleb Stemmel was too selfish to care for any 
one but himself. He talked as though he were sitting 
behind the stove in the store with Caleb and Danny 
Koser and the rest. And then — the teacher's face 
flushed, the bright color faded from Katy Gaumer's 
cheeks, and fathers and mothers nudged each other 
once more — he said he had come a thousand miles to 
hear a Pennsylvania German Christmas entertainment. 



ELSIE SINGMASTER 185 

He said that it was necessary, of course, for every 
one to iearn English, — it was the language of their 
country, — but at Ghristmas-time they should remember 
with pride that no nation in the w r orld felt the Christ- 
mas spirit like the Germans. It was a time when 
everybody should be grateful for his German blood, 
and should practice his German speech. He had been 
looking forward to this entertainment for weeks ; he 
had told his friends about it ; he knew that there was 
at least one place where he could hear "Stille Nacht." 
He almost dared to hope that there would be a "Beis- 
nickel." If old men could be granted their dearest 
wish, they would be young again. The entertainment, 
he said, was going to make him young for one after- 
noon. 

Then the great man sat down, and the little man 
rose. The teacher was panic-stricken once more. He 
was furious with himself for having called on Daniel 
Gaumer first ; he was furious with Daniel Gaumer for 
thus foolishly upsetting all his teaching; he did not 
care, he said to himself, whether the children failed or 
not. He announced "Annie and Willie's Prayer." 

It seemed for a moment that Katy herself would 
fail. She looked back into the teacher's eyes. He 
could not have prompted her if his life had depended 
on it. He glanced at the program in his hand to see 
who came next. 

But Katy had begun. She bowed to the audience, 
she bowed to the stranger, — she had effective, stagy 
ways, — and then she began. To the staring children, 
to the astonished fathers and mothers; to the delighted 



1 86 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

stranger, she recited a new piece. They had heard it 
all their lives ; in fact, many of them knew it by heart. 
It was not "Annie and Willie's Prayer/' it was not 
even a Christmas piece, but it was as appropriate to 
the occasion as either. Katy knew this also like her 
own name ; it was the way Katy Gaumer knew every- 
thing. It was "Das alt Schulhaus an der Crick," and 
the translation compares with the original as the 
teacher's Christmas entertainment compared with Katy 
Gaumer's : 

To-day it is just twenty years 

Since I began to roam ; 
Now, safely back, I stand once more 
Before the quaint old school-house door, 

Close by my father's home. 
I've been in many houses since, 

Of marble built and brick; 
Though grander far, their aim they miss, 
To lure my heart's old love from this 

Old school-house on the creek. 

Katy Gaumer's eyes did not continue to rest on 
the visitor's face. There were thirty-one stanzas in. 
her recitation ; there was time to look at each one in 
her audience. At the fathers and mothers she did not 
look at all ; at Ollie Kuhns and Jimmie Weygandt and 
little Sarah Knerr, however, she looked hard and long. 
She was still staring at Ollie when she sat down — 
staring so hard that she did not hear the applause, 
which the stranger led. She did not sit down grace- 
fully; she hung half-way out of her seat, bracing her- 



ELSIE SINGMASTER 187 

self with her arm about her little brother, and still 
staring at Ollie Kuhns. 

The teacher forgot to announce Ollie's speech, 
but no one noticed. Ollie rose, grinning. This was all 
a beautiful joke to him. He knew a trick worth two 
of Katy's. Did he not know a piece called "Der Bels- 
niekel," a description of the masked, fur-clad creature 
who in Daniel Gaumer's day brought cakes for good 
children and switches for the nixnutzige? Ollie had 
terrified the children a thousand times with his rep- 
resentation of "Bosco the Wild Man/' It was a 
simple thing to make them see a fearful Belsnickel 
before their eyes. 

And little Sarah Knerr, did she not know "Das 
Krischkindel." which told of the divine Christmas 
spirit? She had learned it for last year's Sunday- 
school entertainment; she said it now with exquisite 
and gentle painstaking. When she was through, the 
teacher rose as though hypnotized and went to the 
organ. There was an advisory hum from Katy Gau- 
tner, to which the teacher listened with irritation. He 
had some sense. There was of course only one thing 
to be sung, and that was "Stille Nacht." The children 
sang, and the fathers and mothers sang, and the 
stranger led them with his strong voice. 

Only Katy Gaumer, fixing one of the remaining 
performers after the other with her eye, sang no more 
after the tune was started. There was Coonie 
Schnable. She said to herself that he would prob- 
ably fail, anyhow ; it made little difference whether his 
few unintelligible words were English or German. 



1 88 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

Coonie Schnable was always the clown of the enter- 
tainment; he would be of this one also. 

But Coonie did not fail. Ellie Shindler recited 
a German description of "The County Fair" without 
a break, then Coonie Schnable rose. He had once 
"helped" successfully in a dialogue. For those who 
know no Pennsylvania German it must suffice that it 
was a translation of a scene in Hamlet. For the benefit 
of those who are more fortunate the translation is 
appended. Coonie now recited all the parts. 

Hamlet : Oh, du armes Schpook ! 

Ghost : Pity mich net, aber geb mir now der Ohre 
For ich will dir amohl eppas sawga. 

Hamlet: Schwetz rous, for ich will es now aw hera. 

Ghost: Und wenn du haresht don nemsht aw satis- 
faction. 

Hamlet: Well, was is 's? Rous mit! 

Ghost: Ich bin dei' dawdy sei' Schpook. 

To the children, everything which Coonie did was 
funny, and their fathers and mothers laughed with 
them. The stranger seemed to discover still deeper 
springs of mirth; he laughed until he cried. 

Only Katy Gaumer, stealing out, was not there to 
see the end. Nor was she at hand to speed her little 
brother Adam, who was to close the entertainment 
with "Hang up the Baby's Stocking." But Adam had 
had his instructions. He knew no German recita- 
tion, — this was his first essay at speech-making, — but 
he knew a German Bible verse which his Grandmother 



ELSIE SINGMASTER 189 

Gaumer had taught him: "Ehre sei Gott in der Hohe 
und Friede auf Erden, und den Menschen ein Wohlge- 
f alien" ["Glory to God in the highest, and on earth 
peace, good will toward men"]. He looked like a 
Christmas spirit himself as he said it, with his flaxen 
hair and his blue eyes, as the stranger might have 
looked fifty years ago. Daniel Gaumer smiled at him 
as he passed, then gathered him to his knee. 

Suddenly little Adam screamed, and hid his face 
against the stranger's breast; then another child 
shrieked in excited rapture. The Belsnickel had come ! 
It was covered with the dust of the school-house 
garret; it was not of the traditional huge size, — it 
was, indeed, less than five feet tall, — but it wore a 
furry coat, — the distinguished stranger leaped to his 
feet, saying it was not possible that that old pelt still 
survived, — it opened its mouth "like scissors," as Ollie 
Kuhn's piece said. It had not the traditional bag, but 
it had a basket, — Grandma Gaumer's, — and the tra- 
ditional cakes and apples were there. It climbed upon 
a desk, its black- stockinged legs and red dress showing 
through the rents of the old, ragged coat, and the 
children surrounded it, laughing, begging, screaming 
with delight. 

It was then that the stranger joined his brother at 
the back of the room, asking who the Belsnickel was 
He did not realize how large a part Katy had had in 
the entertainment; he knew only that custom selected 
the most capable and popular scholar for that delight- 
ful office. Katy's grandfather called her to him, and 
she came slowly, slipping like a crimson butterfly from 



ipo HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

the furry pelt, which the children seized upon with joy. 
She heard her grandfather tell his brother that she 
was "Abner's little girl," and her eyes met the 
stranger's bright gaze. She hesitated in the middle of 
the room and looked at him. A consciousness of kin- 
ship warmed her heart, then a smothering joy. He, 
too, had hated Millerstown, or he would not have 
gone away; he, too, loved it, or he would not have 
come back. He would understand her, help her. He 
understood even now, for stooping to kiss her, he hid 
her nervous, foolish tears from Millerstown. 



Used by permission of The Century Company, New 
York. 



HOME READING. 

When Sarah Saved the Day. 
When Sarah Went to School. 



APPENDIX 

THE STUDY OF POETRY 

i. Learn something about the life of the author, and 
imagine {if possible) what incident inspired the poem. 

2. What pictures are formed? 

(a) The foreground — the main picture. 

(b) The background — the subordinate scenes. 

3. The exact meaning, if possible, of every thought, 

(a) Write or tell the meaning of the poem in simple 
prose. 

(b) Consult a standard dictionary for meaning of 
words. 

(c) Note strength or weakness of figures of speech. 
Do not go too much into detail. 

(d) To appreciate classical references, use freely a 
good book of mythology. 

(e) The metre of the verse should accord with the 
thought of the poem. 

(f) Read poetry aloud. 

NOTES 

Page 17 — Christ-kindchen. Kindchen is the German for 
"little child," hence the Christ-child. 

Page 20 — Zeil. This is the most prominent business 
street in Frankfurt. 

Page 20 — Prost Neu Jahr. This is an expression much 
used in Germany, meaning, "May the New Year benefit you !" 
or "May you enjoy the New Year!" The word "prost" is 
not German, but a contracted Latin form. 

Page 23 — Pasha. A title of honor of the chief ministers, 
and of the military, naval and civil officers in the Turkish 
Empire. 

191 



192 HOME AUTHORS— PENNSYLVANIA 

Page 24 — Khartoum. Capital and principal market- 
place of the Egyptian Sudan, situated at the junction of 
the Blue and White Nile. It is famous in history. 

Page 37 — Papier-mache. Made of paper. 

Page 38 — Pantagruelist. One who assumes a ridiculous 
form of dress to conceal a serious purpose. 

Page 39 — Angelus. The bell which sounds in the eve- 
ning for a brief period of devotion. 

Page 39 — Torlonia's palace. Giovanni Torlonia was the 
first prominent member of the family of that name. He 
amassed great wealth. 

Page 39 — Walpurgis night. The night which precedes 
May 1, when, according to a popular superstition, witches 
gathered, on the highest peak of the Harz Mountains, in 
Germany, to celebrate with their master, the devil, the 
great heathen festival of May Day. 

Page 42. — Juvenal. A great Roman writer of satire. 

Page 69— Nihilists. Members of a secret organization 
which seeks to destroy present social institutoins. 

Page 75 — Gemini. Meaning twins, hence Bill and 
Harry. 

Page 87 — Students should read all of "A Venture in 
1777-" 

Page 91 — Wissahickon. A stream near Philadelphia. 

Page 91 — Long Island and Brandywine. The reference 
is to the Revolutionary battles. 

Page 92 — O River. The Susquehanna. 

Page 113 — Pablo. A Mexican boy, whose companion 
was El Sabio, a mule. El Sabio means the Wise One. He 
was so named because of his intelligence. 

Page 114— Padre. The Father, Fray Antonio, who was 
a monk. 

Page 128 — Along the Pocono. Locate on a map of 
Pennsylvania. 



JUL 14 1913 



